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MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT 



OR 



SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE OF A SUPREME 
INTELLIGENCE 

y 

" Faith were science, now, 

Would she but lay her bow and arrows by, 
And arm Her with the weapons of the time." 






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G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK 

LONDON 

'■7 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 

2 4 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND 

Ube Iknfcfcerbocfcer press 
1895 



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COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 



Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by 

Ube IKnicfeerbocker lprese, IKtew J^otrfi 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 



PREFACE. 

IT is believed that the advance of science has de- 
veloped fundamental truths which strengthen 
the hands of faith. To briefly point out some 
of these is the purpose of this little volume. 

The well-informed thinker knows that so far as 
determined by pure reason, the question of the ex- 
istence of God is one of probability only. It is only 
by the accumulation of truth that learning comes 
to the aid of faith and hope. 

In the contemplation of Nature, " Such is the 
order, fitness, and beauty, whether in the infinity of 
space, or in its unlimited division, that even with 
our little knowledge of things, all language loses its 
vigor, and all numbers their power of reasoning. 
Our judgment is lost in speechless eloquent aston- 
ishment." 

By unavoidable convictions of cause, we complete 
a regression from effect to cause to a Being uncon- 
ditionally necessary to such a world of life. Yet in 
this mental process, as in every kind of so-called proof 
of the existence of God, derived from speculative rea- 
son alone, we ascend from definite experience to a 
highest Cause existing outside of experience ; to a 
conclusion of necessary existence, from given exist- 
ence ; and of course all such reasoning is fallacious 

iii 



iv PREFACE. 

and indeterminate. God is thereby disassociated 
from matter and force, and made a prior existence 
and a Creator ; whereas matter, force, and God are 
co-existent and co-eternal. The very idea of God as 
spirit is inseparable from the idea of matter ; and 
without such association He is no more conceivable 
than is a God without time, or space. 

This concept of co-existence excludes the idea of 
the creation of matter, or of force, and presents the 
universe as an eternal reflection of spirit ; matter 
and force being merely external expressions of Divine 
Self. 

Conceding such Divine existence, we concede His 
knowledge of all the possibilities of His own laws, 
and of their culmination in organic life and mental 
power. In short we concede His prevision of man's 
existence on earth. And unless we regard man as 
a Divine plaything, the disport of an hour, a creature 
given being and then expunged from being, we 
may reasonably conclude, that his earth-life is a pre- 
lude to another life upon which he enters with the 
product of his earth knowledge and of his virtue. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTORY I 

All Knowledge Relative — Ideas of Force and Matter Re- 
stricted — Broadening Influence upon Religion of Science — 
They are in no Sense Antagonistic — The too Aggressive 
Spirit of Science — The Conservation of Energy— One Law 
for All Physical Phenomena — Limit of the Inquiry. 

CHAPTER II. 

MATTER 8 

Idea of Matter — Divisibility — Figure of Final Units — 
Difference of Magnitude — Sameness of all Matter — Be- 
longs to all Space — Is Matter of Different Elements 
Intrinsically Different ? — Nebular Hypothesis — Deduc- 
tions from It — Evidence of Supreme Spirit. 

CHAPTER III. 

FORCE 35 

Conception of Force — Motion the Necessary State of all 
Matter — Law of Gravitation — Universal — Transmission 
Independent of a Medium — Primary Force — Its Location 
and Discussion — Repulsive Action — Multiple Atoms — Ele- 
mental Matter — Primary and Innate Force, Definite and 
Quantitative. 

v 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 



THE FORCES OF THE PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF 

MATTER 60 

Heat and Light Motion — Interchange — Manifestation of 
Electrical Phenomena — Mode of Motion — Proceeds from 
One Primary Force — How Produced — Mutual Interchange 
of all Physical Forces of Matter— Probable Nature of 
Magnetism and Electricity — How they Differ — Direction 
of Transfer of their Energies. 

CHAPTER V. 

CHEMICAL ENERGY AND THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA 

OF VITAL FORCE 79 

Chemical action a Differential Attraction — No Differences 
of Inherent Forces of Elements— Apparent Differences 
Accounted for — Current Electricity — Chemical Action 
Releases Energy — Vital Force not Possible except under 
Conditions of great Heterogeneity of Matter — Its Charac- 
teristic Phenomena — Chemical Action Renders it Possible 
— Opposite Action of Life Energy, and Chemical Energy 
— Theological Conceptions — What we Witness in Life 
Force — Channels of its Energy — Its Nature. 

CHAPTER VI. 

EVIDENCE FROM THE WORLD OF MATTER AND 

FORCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT .... 95 
Nature's Methods those of Simplicity — Consensus of 
Opinion — Life Force and its Origin — Of the Laws of 
Attraction — Of the Conservation of Energy — Variety 
of Elements — Nature of Attractive Force — Likeness to 
Spirit Force — Presumptions of Materialism — Cognition, 
Self-Consciousness, and Reason — Limits of Understanding 
— Habit, Instinct, Heredity — Substance and Spirit — Life 
Force and Life Conditions — Advancement. 



CONTENTS. vii 

CHAPTER VII. 



EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT IN PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA . 120 

Thought Transference — Somnambulism, Hypnotism, Etc. 
— Community of Thought and Waves of Thought — Inter- 
connection of Mind — Spiritual Side of Inbeing Force — 
Individual Responsibility — Animal Sympathy — Corollaries 
of the Foregoing — Summary as to Spirit Quality of Life 
Force. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

RELIGION OF SCIENCE A RELIGION OF GOD . . 132 

Idea of Supreme Spirit a Duplex Conception — Religious 
Thought and its Evolution — True Religion and True 
Science — Results Unite instead of Diverging — Religion 
Common to all Men — Of the Great Religions of Earth — 
Evolution of Great Religious Leaders — Spiritual Phenom- 
ena Psychic — Duty of Science to Investigate and Develop 
Truth. 



MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 



CHAPTER I. 
INTRODUCTORY. 

All Knowledge Relative — Ideas of Force and Matter Restricted — 
Broadening Influence upon Religion of Science — They are in no 
Sense Antagonistic — The too Aggressive Spirit of Science — The 
Conservation of Energy — One Law for All Physical Phenomena 
— Limit of the Inquiry. 

BEFORE we concede to materialism that " the 
mind of man is potential in the sun," let 
us be sure that we understand matter and 
force, —so far, at least, as to exhaust what experience 
and the analysis of these subjects teach. 

Time, space, matter, motion, and force, in their 
largest sense, are eternal. The contrary is incon- 
ceivable. Neither their creation nor destruction are 
thinkable. If they exist of necessity, they have al- 
ways existed. And whoever asserts the creation of 
matter by a Supreme pre-existent Intelligence, as- 
serts that during an eternity of time matter was 
not ; and that at some moment Supreme Wisdom 
changed, — which is inconsistent. 



2 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

Matter is the matrix of man's education. It is the 
basis of his physical action and conceptions, and his 
whole mentality is founded therein. From it he 
derives his ideas of spirit, and a part of his spiritual 
growth is a process through matter. 

Knowledge begins in the unknown and ends in 
the unknowable. All that man has acquired relates 
to but a brief interval between limits, from a time 
past, to a not very distant time future. Before these 
limits, an eternity ; — beyond them, an eternity, about 
which he knows nothing. 

Though imagination and speculation are untram- 
melled by boundaries, all positive knowledge is con- 
fined within these adamantine walls ; — a relative 
extent in time, and a relative extent in space. Ail 
knowledge is relative, and all thought relative. 
" The highest reach of human science is the scien- 
tific recognition of human ignorance." All that we 
know, are the forms and the laws of phenomena ; 
and absolutely nothing as to the ultimate nature of 
things. 

Experience, with collective points of resistance, 
called matter, invests us with the idea that they are 
possessed of inherent force. Grouped under certain 
conditions of environment, they move as if under 
a directing agency, which we call life, and there result 
animate or inanimate forms, and even intelligence. 

But who can assert that, instead of a material 
universe composed of solid, ponderable, ultimate 
units of matter, indivisible and imperceptible — this 
is not a spiritual universe, with what we call matter 
only a means to an end ? A material manifestation 



IN TROD UC TOR Y. 3 

of spirit ? — " spirit and matter holding each other in 
mystic unity and equilibrium." Of course this is 
not what we accept as most probable, but there is 
always possibility beyond actuality, or the seeming 
solid materiality of our surroundings. While true 
learning destroys the self-assurance of men, it is not 
credible that, with its extension, the world is more 
sceptical ; that as the supreme limits of knowledge 
are approached, there is an increase of atheism. In- 
vestigation has dispelled illusion. Experiment has 
established law. Discovery has destroyed supersti- 
tion. Science has made the path to God clearer, 
plainer, and more attractively beautiful, instead of 
more obscure. The dense undergrowth of former 
ignorance with its forbidding gloom and mystery 
has been swept aside, and the lovely sunlight of 
truth illumines the way everywhere. Instead of 
many gods, mankind has been led to one God ; in- 
stead of spirits of all degrees, they have been shown 
the one all-pervading Spirit, the Inspirer and Con- 
troller of Nature. The advance of science has not 
favored the material side only, for while it has given 
more direct and more simple views of natural phe- 
nomena, it has as steadily pointed to a universal 
Spirit. 

Religion in its broad sense, has nothing to fear 
from science ; on the contrary, it should hail with 
delight every scientific discovery, every truth estab- 
lished, not only as an approach to the unity and 
simplicity of fundamental law, and to emancipation 
from the blind assertions of the sceptical as to mys- 
terious possibilities of Nature's forces during aeons 



4 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

of time, but as conducting us to loftier views of the 
material universe. There are those ready to assert 
that matter has a manifold variety of physical, in- 
herent powers, quite sufficient to account for the life 
of plants, of animals, and of men ; that life is poten- 
tial in the sun ; and that it may be manufactured in 
the laboratory of the chemist. Because equivalents 
of energy are traced in the thought action of the 
brain, and analogies to polarities of force are seen in 
nerve life, they are quite ready to deliver themselves 
and their beliefs over to the possibilities of the mys- 
terious forces of nature, which are declared to be 
all-sufficient though too elusive to comprehend. 
It was long doctrinally held that each of the physi- 
cal affections known as light, heat, electricity, mag- 
netism, and chemical affinity, was due to the 
presence of a peculiar force inherent in the final 
units of matter, whose characteristic was corres- 
pondent with the particular manifestation or mode 
of motion set up in each form of phenomena. So 
long as it was maintained that matter was thus en- 
dowed with such a multiplicity of properties, so 
numerous, co-resident, yet distinct, there was tacitly 
conceded to it a capacity almost unlimited. There 
is no need of surprise, in the presence of such con- 
cessions to the mysterious, that imagination should 
dominate, or that wonder should replace reason. 
In these assumptions, there was a surrender of the 
key position either to unlimited credulity, or to ar- 
rogant assertions that matter alone is all-sufficient 
to form life, and that man need not look beyond it 
for a God. 



IN TROD UC TOR Y. 5 

The sooner such assertions are stripped of this 
mask of the mysterious, the more advantageous to 
the scientific and religious spirit of the age. The 
truth then will be the more clearly seen, that though 
the natural energy of matter suffices for its aggrega- 
tion into earth forms, and for the preparation of 
conditions favorable to life, it is utterly impotent to 
confer life itself; and that matter is only a domino 
veiling universal life. The true spirit of patient, 
reverent, and truth-seeking science, is not in sympa- 
thy with confident assumption. Discovery has fol- 
lowed discovery, until the very confines of inquiry 
in some directions have been reached. Light and 
heat have been rescued from the domain of entities, 
and are, like sound, regarded as modes of motion. 
Chemical action is wholly separated from the mystic 
term " chemical affinity " ; its polar energies have 
been shown, and that its interchanges are between 
electro-positive and electro-negative elements. Mag- 
netic and electric forces are no longer thought to be 
fluids — mysterious forms of matter, eccentric accu- 
mulations in space of wondrous powers and capac- 
ity ; but merely vibrant conditions of substance, or 
modes of its motion, belonging to all matter, but 
more manifest in some than in other elements ; in 
some, affecting more the surfaces, in others, the en- 
tire mass of bodies. Its interchanges are waves of 
motion, impelled by higher intensities, or by greater 
volume of the released energies of one portion of 
the body, or of the surface, over those of the other 
portion. From time to time, glimpses from sci- 
entific standpoints have suggested the existence 



6 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

of a single primary energy underlying all processes 
of nature ; but the direct view was not attainable 
until the truth of the conservation of energy, or the 
persistence of force had been established ; then it 
followed, that the different phenomena of light, 
heat, electricity, magnetism, sound, chemical power, 
etc., are rendered possible by the transference of 
equivalent force from one of these forms to another. 
Of course, under this view, all phenomena become 
merely relations of succession. 

There is no truth in nature more fundamental 
than the principle of the persistence of force ; where 
force seems to have vanished, it has merely taken 
some other compensating form. Formerly, the an- 
nihilation, or the sudden creation of force, without 
apparent cause, was considered in thought perfectly 
natural, and no more singular, than that heavy 
bodies should fall ; though why they were heavy, it 
seems never to have occurred to anyone before 
Newton, to inquire. It is impossible to over-esti- 
mate the importance of a law referring to a single 
origin, all physical phenomena. Beyond the approx- 
imate scientific unity, there follow homogeneousness 
of doctrine, and unity of philosophical method. In 
unity of credence is the beginning of harmony ; 
therefrom flows the useful, the perfection of equity, 
and there begins universal benevolence. 

Beyond the impetus and accord thus given to 
truth, are increased facilities for the study of abstract 
knowledge in its broadest conception. Its pursuit 
is man's most exalted function. It alone enlightens 
him in his relations to his race, and to nature, and 



IN TROD UCTOR Y. J 

best fits him for his position at her head. The 
inquiry can never be wholly removed from the meta- 
physical aspect, since positive demonstration is im- 
practicable. Matter is known only through motion, 
and force only through matter ; and there will 
always remain a possibility, beyond the real and 
useful probability. But can Faith, or hope of a 
future life, claim anything more ? If spirit be not 
the source and energy of all things, the evolving 
principle of all life in that which we call matter, 
then matter, dense, helpless, and inert, and having 
an equally helpless force, — is the soul and source 
of all. Life is then a hideous, grinning satire, a 
burlesque upon effort and knowledge, — objectless 
and purposeless ; and Nature nothing more than a 
vast, blind, grinding engine, unbidden and unknow- 
ing, working in an aimless and spiritless universe. 

It is proposed to examine briefly that knowledge, 
which comes of experiment and experience, called 
science ; to see how far, if at all, it antagonizes 
spirit ; to view there the horizon of the sceptic, and, 
perchance to get a better spiritual outlook. We 
may then determine whether such knowledge con- 
ducts to a lower or a loftier ideal ; nearer to, or 
farther from a universal and supreme spirit. 



CHAPTER II. 



MATTER. 



Idea of Matter — Divisibility — Figure of Final Units — Difference of 
Magnitude — Sameness of all Matter — Belongs to all Space — Is 
Matter of Different Elements Intrinsically Different ? — Nebular 
Hypothesis — Deductions from It — Evidence of Supreme Spirit. 

IT is our purpose to treat matter and force from a 
purely physical or material standpoint, view- 
ing force according to the mechanical under- 
standing of force, as a quantitative energy ; and 
stripping matter of its mysterious asserted entities, 
and so far as may be, laying it bare by analysis, that 
its possibilities, and intrenched life-creative powers 
may be estimated. We therefore assume matter to 
be a reality, and not collections of immaterial points 
of resistance, and if its masses be real, that their 
combining units are also real. An old and still 
contested question is of their unlimited divisibility, 
and it has grown to factitious proportions by the 
extension to abstract possibility, of the likeness of 
actual process. It is of no importance that we may 
abstractedly extend the division of what are the 
real final units of matter ; there is a vast difference 
between the conception of successive division, indefi- 
nitely prolonged, and the actual limit of divisibility. 

8 



MA TTER. 9 

The real question is, do the facts of nature indicate 
a limit to divisibility ? Though this may not be the 
limit of conception, yet it is the limit of our concern 
with the inquiry, for it is the limit of the operation 
of law through any period of duration. This, pre- 
sumptively, has been eternal, and consequently, so 
far as we are concerned, any ultimate consequence 
has already been reached. To say that matter is every 
thing visible and tangible, is incompletely defining it. 
To say that it is substance, of which all things are 
composed, is to say that matter is matter. The only 
possible standard of thought is the ultimate concep- 
tion. The instant we admit matter to be real, and 
distinguished from force, its ultimate measure, we 
admit its final units to occupy in space the three 
dimensions, of length, breadth, and thickness, and 
that they are incompressible ; otherwise they are 
not final, for whatever is compressible is made up of 
parts, and compressibility is the capacity of dimin- 
ishing interstitial spaces. Hence the reality of mat- 
ter, to which we arrive in conception, as our ultimate 
thought, is that of final units of substance, of three 
dimensions without constituent parts, and wholly 
incompressible and impenetrable, opaque, colorless, 
and ponderable and having absolute hardness. A 
homogeneous unity, neither disruptured by shock 
of impact, nor divided by friction, or other influences. 
The idea of the composition of matter from indivisi- 
ble ultimates, is a growth from scientific thought. 
At first it was a vague metaphysical notion, originat- 
ing with Leucippus, but under the bold hand of 
Dalton, it became a brilliant and fertile reality. 



IO MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

The deductions of chemical.analysis and synthesis 
evince that the practical divisions of matter are 
soon reached. The balance of the chemist has also 
overturned the belief so long entertained, of the 
destructibility of matter. Now the conception of 
its diminution or expulsion from existence, is as 
impossible as that of its increase, or appearance 
from nothing. And as each of its final units is the 
matrix of an inherent energy, and as each also rep- 
resents by its never ending motion, a mechanical 
force, the idea of the creation, or annihilation of 
matter, obliterates at once all idea of laws of force. 
It will therefore be accepted, that the quantity of 
matter, and therefore of inherent energy in the 
universe, is always the same. 

The figure of the ultimate units of matter, though 
unchangeable, is not practically determinate, the 
inquiry, for obvious reasons, being removed from 
demonstration. The inherent force of each unit 
tending to uniformity of distribution, and concen- 
trating on itself would — granting mobility — produce 
a sphere. But absolutely fixed and incompressible 
as are these units, any resultant shape consequent 
upon any conceivable force, is unthinkable. This is 
true of all conjectures whatever upon their shape, 
as proceeding from a constraining force. And yet 
the subject is not wholly removed from the domain 
of reason. The course of nature in all of her mani- 
festations is a procession of uniform simplicity, and 
all experiences irresistibly shape ideas to the belief 
in one comprehensive method. 

In minute, component forces, before polar inter- 



MA TTER. 1 1 

changes, or other causes, have forced a secondary 
arrangement of units, we arrive at a sphere as the 
representative figure. In semi-fluidity, where vibra- 
tory action predominates over attraction, there is in 
small aggregations of matter a spherical resultant. 
And cosmical masses, under the free action of cen- 
tral forces, are rolled into spheres throughout the 
heavens. As, therefore, all discernible forms tend 
to the spherical, in this uniformity there is involun- 
tarily suggested the idea of an ultimate spherical 
archetype of form, justified further by the very 
hypothesis of the investiture of matter with inherent 
force. For as the final units of matter are homo- 
geneous solids, their motions would be prejudiced in 
particular directions, unless the inherent force of 
each was so distributed, as to be capable of acting 
with equal energy from any point of the surface 
upon environing matter ; and no figure other than the 
sphere admits of these conditions. It is a figure of 
equilibrium, in being a figure of equal distribution 
of its own inherent energy. And since in nature, 
there is no warrant of predisposed direction of en- 
ergy, the burden of evidence renders it probable 
that the figure of the final units of all matter is 
spherical ; and if this be the case, it necessarily 
follows, that the natural figure of all multiple 
atoms, or molecules, whose units are of the same 
magnitude, are also spherical. Another question is, 
whether or not there is uniformity of magnitude in 
the final units of matter. If the ultimate nature of 
all matter, in its final units, be the same, this question 
must be answered in the negative ; for then there is 



12 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

no other way of accounting for the apparent differ- 
ences of so-called elements, than that there is a differ- 
ence of magnitude between the final units of different 
elements. As to whether there can be radical differ- 
ences of elemental matter, depends upon the nature 
of the inherent force of the final units of each ele- 
ment. If these forces be, or can be, different, then, 
of course, each element in its mass presents corre- 
sponding properties to these inherent forces. This 
inquiry will be fully discussed in the chapter on 
force, but for the present, it will be assumed that 
matter is identical in its final divisions ; and of 
course, that each final unit of all forms of matter is 
invested with precisely the same kind of force. 
Under this assumption, we shall examine the evi- 
dence as to the difference of magnitude of the 
various forms of elemental matter. All composition 
and resolution of matter come from the action of 
forces, — those of mechanical motion, and those in- 
herent in the final units ; the last, the assembling, 
and the first, the disintegrating ; the two together 
sift matter. Under the dominion of these forces, 
matter is in unceasing motion, not only the consen- 
taneous motion of the units of the mass, but the 
vibratory motion of those units ; for none of the 
physical affections of matter, known as light, heat, 
electricity, magnetism, chemical action, etc., are 
admissible, without a conceded motion of the ulti- 
mate units of matter, with interspaces for that 
motion. Equal" diffusion of motion throughout any 
mass is consistent only with uniformity of resistance, 
and a uniformity of the forces acting in the mass. 



MA TTER. 1 3 

It is upon the equal diffusion of motion, through 
the composing units, and the uniformity of their 
resistance to motion, that depends the stability of 
elemental divisions of matter. 

If the units are dissimilar, their degrees of dis- 
placement are unequal, their motions neither conso- 
nant nor reciprocal, and they will consequently be 
segregated, under the action of a continuous inci- 
dent force, and reunited into groups of like units, 
the arrangement being the more stable, as the units 
are more alike. Further, if the units of all elements 
be of equal magnitude, the degree of their juxta- 
position, or the density of all elements under the 
same environment should be the same, which is not 
the case. Proofs and arguments could be readily 
multiplied to the same end, drawn from the laws of 
chemistry, — from considerations of heat and other 
sources, but they would be out of place in a work of 
this nature. Suffice it to say, that we must either 
admit differences of magnitude of the final units of 
the different elemental forms of matter ; or that the 
final units of these elements are invested with in- 
herent forces in each element, differing from those 
of any other element. Now as there are in nature 
about seventy known elements, metallic and non- 
metallic, it follows that there must be a correspond- 
ing number of different inherent forces, a particular 
kind for the final units of each element. This is not 
only absurd, but impossible, as will be shown in the 
discussion of the subject of force. But supposing 
all these points settled, are they decided with refer- 
ence to our earth alone ? If so they are special. 



14 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

Or are questions of divisibility, indestructibility, 
form, magnitude, etc., of final units, to be confined 
to our solar system ? If so they are still special. 

Astronomers no longer grope in the heavens to 
determine problems, or to verify evidence limited 
in its scope, or peculiar in its application ; they seek 
generalities and the broadest types. From general 
laws inquiry extends to more fundamental laws in 
all channels of knowledge, so impressed is the scien- 
tific spirit, that the matter and energy of our system 
are connate with those of all others, a unity, a one- 
ness, a likeness of universality. This is an increase 
of conviction through the multiplication of experi- 
ences, — experiences, the researches of all men, 
adopted as individual experiences, and again ex- 
tended, impossible either to controvert or to avoid. 
To declare that matter is of a definite limit, though- 
contained in an indefinite extension ; and that par- 
ticular elemental forms of it are limited to partic- 
ular parts of space ; — or that matter conformable 
to one part of space is unconformable to other 
portions ; — is to oppose a development of thought 
now become universal. It is to retrograde amidst 
general progression. It is to turn toward the crude 
opinions of man's primitive state, when, in his con- 
summate vanity, he regarded himself as the centre 
of the universe and its final purpose ; the pride of 
the earth and the admired of heaven ; when he be- 
lieved that the sun, moon, and all the stars of the 
celestial sphere made daily obeisance around his 
little planet. And when in his conceit he compla- 
cently believed that angels ministered to him, and 



MA TTER. I 5 

in his supreme arrogance scorned to think himself 
subject alike with all things to nature's laws ; when in 
fine, he surveyed himself as the exclusive and unre- 
mitting object of Divine attention. But knowledge 
has conducted us to wider, nobler views, not less 
reverent, but more humble. 

Space is infinite. The contrary is not conceiv- 
able. If then but a part of space contains matter, 
the infinite part beyond is a useless void, and any 
definite part, however vast, is simply a finger's span 
to the infinite part. This idea of space, and the 
occupancy of a mere crib-work of the whole, is 
utterly inconsistent with any natural conception of 
an Omnipotent and Omnipresent Being. For He is 
all-comprehensive, all-embracing, and His corre- 
spondent and parallel can be found only in an infi- 
nite universality. Wisdom, space, force, matter, no 
one of these could be co-equal in completeness if 
any were limited ; for then since the Infinite is omni- 
present, absolute wisdom and power would to no 
purpose extend to an infinite empty space. 

If that infinite space be abandoned of God, of 
matter, and of force, He is not omnipresent, and 
there remains an infinite uncontrolled region where 
He is not. Nor is He infinite, if not omnipresent. 

Now let it be supposed for a moment, that there 
is no infinite co-existent intelligence, whose supreme 
wisdom directs all things ; that there is merely a 
self-existence from necessity, which always was, and 
always will be. There is then of necessity, space ; 
and of necessity, matter. If then matter fill only 
a mere patch of space, necessity has only a partial 



1 6 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

action ; it is neither uniform, nor universal, and this 
is not necessity. 

What necessarily exists, universally exists. What- 
ever is a necessity to a part of space, is a necessity to 
all space. Whether then, from intelligent omnipo- 
tence, or from necessity, the universe exists, as it 
exists, matter must be regarded as the universal fea- 
ture of infinite space. 

But to return to actual discovery. Telescopes of 
increasing range are filled with increasing fields of 
matter, as dense, as vast, in consolidated or diffused 
magnitude, as that nearer and better known, and at 
distances so great, that the mind wanders in their 
contemplation. And the assumption of unlimited 
worlds, and world forms in the infinite beyond, is 
defensible by analogy. But is the matter of this 
immeasurable space the same as that surrounding 
us? In the subject of force it will be shown, that 
as far as is possible to determine, the laws of gravi- 
tation govern all matter and stellar systems, — and 
that there is a consonant parallelism in that portion 
of the universe within our view. 

Physical science persuades us that our sidereal sys- 
tem is but an atomic agglomeration from many 
others. The central forces of attraction have forced 
into collision vast worlds of consolidated matter; — 
the shock of impact has transformed all their pro- 
gressive motion into the vibratory motion of heat, 
dispersing and expending this matter to amazing 
limits ; diffusing it into its final units. Under the 
influence of this expansive power the matter of our 
system has passed into other spheres, — and that of 



MATTER. I J 

other spheres undergoing similar experiences, has 
commingled with our own. 

Aerolites of solid matter, identical with terrestrial 
matter, are shot from stellar regions to our earth ; 
and wandering comets are driven into our sun, or 
pass in eccentric orbits forever beyond its influence, 
to other solar systems. This perpetual intermixture, 
without beginning or ending, must have produced 
correspondence, in fact, undistinguishable sameness 
everywhere. The spectroscope decides the presence 
in remote worlds, of elements, metallic and non- 
metallic, identical with those of ours ; and a fair 
analogy warrants us in extending the congruence in- 
definitely ; and in the conclusion, that there is an 
infinite extent of matter in no respect different from 
that occupying our solar system. 

Through endless cycles it has pursued a common 
course, and through unceasing duration will continue 
to repeat its changes of aggregation and segregation. 
The telescope in its scrutiny of the universe will find 
no void short of infinity, and the microscope, no 
element different from ours, or younger than eter- 
nity. Another question is the identity of matter. 

Do its diverse elemental properties arise from in- 
herent differences of the force of the final units of 
matter of the different elements, or do they arise 
from differences in the action of the same inherent 
energy, by reason of the differences of magnitude 
of the final units? 

In other words, are ultimate units possessed of 
primitive forces, intrinsically different, or are the 
forces of all final units precisely the same? The 



1 8 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

complex matter of organic compounds, distributed 
in pleasing pictures, and in lavish profusion around 
us, are appearances of variety and diversity ; yet in 
a few chief, and some subordinate elements, by the 
varying of the constituent proportions, are com- 
prised not only all animal and vegetable substance, 
but the great bulk of terrestrial matter. It is com- 
monplace knowledge, that these beautiful forms 
furnish to the senses no evidence whatever of their 
ingredients, and that the true standard of their 
determination is force. Followed back to their con- 
stituent elements, in their decomposition, the decep- 
tion of appearances, and not unfrequently to a 
startling extent, of properties, continues. And 
rigorous analysis is often necessary to distinguish 
'matter, in many states identical in appearance, yet 
physically different. 

On the other hand, so utterly unlike are the forms 
assumed by the same element, that its equivalent of 
force established by repeated experiment is the only 
final umpire. Let us illustrate by a single example, 
how color, odor, form, density, and other properties, 
may arise from mere differences of arrangement of 
constituent parts of matter. Under three states 
wholly unlike, is the simple element, carbon. In the 
diamond, it is transparent, and the hardest of all 
substances, refracting light in a high degree ; in 
graphite, or black lead, opaque, black, quasi-metallic ; 
in charcoal, velvety, soft and porous ; yet isolate the 
ultimate units of each of these forms, — dissever 
them from collective motion, and they are the same. 

Again, dissimilar elements, by the arrangement of 



MA TTER. 19 

their parts, may closely assimilate. Crystals of pure 
boron are brilliant, transparent, and octahedral ; like 
the diamond of carbon, nearly colorless, and differ- 
ing but little from it, in hardness and refractive 
power. 

The reference of last resort, then, in questions of 
the identity of matter, is not to be found in mere 
mechanical properties, since it is through the elimi- 
nation of these properties, that we approach the in- 
dividuality of matter ; ultimate units can have no 
essential difference not founded upon inbeing forces. 
But habits of thought and association of ideas have 
fastened upon us beyond eradication, ideas of matter, 
so that we unconsciously receive, as true expressions 
of it, mere symbols, or reflections to us of its out- 
ward form. Nothing can dispossess us of this de- 
lusion of thought, but an intimate knowledge of 
nature. 

These perpetual repetitions are prototypes from 
which we fashion our notions of the actual, and we 
fancy that the differences between ultimate units, 
are as radical and intrinsic as are represented in the 
bodies themselves. 

These illusions have even seized upon and infected 
the spirit of science. It has in this manner come to 
be supposed in the general mind — and science is not 
free from the error, — that in the disintegration of mat- 
ter, each minute component carries along with it the 
continuation of all the properties that characterized 
the mass. But this fallacy is seriously shaken by the 
single reflection, that all the physical properties of 
matter with which we are acquainted, arising from 



20 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

forces, with the single exception of atomic energy in 
chemical action, are due to combinations of units 
into masses ; and that they have no existence with- 
out such concretion, since they are modes of motion 
of many units, ceasing with the resolution of the 
mass into its constituent parts. 

Therefore, in the dissection of matter to its final 
units, there are eliminated all those qualities, derived 
from their aggregated motion, and serving to distin- 
guish the mass, as sound, light, heat, color, etc. 

Stripped of physical differences thus arising, what 
are correspondences, and what is the diversity in 
matter remaining? 

All final units being impenetrable, indestructible, 
incompressible solids, there is homogeneousness in 
all. They are equal in density, are ponderable, pro- 
portionate in gravity and inertia ; all are non-elastic ; 
there is no texture, color, or temperature ; and there 
can be nothing left but the asserted differences in 
their inherent forces. These are the dual energies 
of each final unit, upon which existing doctrines 
base magnetic and electric phenomena ; the attrac- 
tive force upon which gravitation is explained ; and, 
the asserted distinct and separate, yet co-resident 
force of repulsion, — all united, it is alleged, in the 
same ultimate form of matter. 

There is the highest probability that the inter- 
spaces of the final units of matter, in the densest 
mass, exceed, by many times, their diameters. If 
this were not the case, color and shade of surfaces 
would be impossible, as would also the temperature 
of bodies ; for temperature is a measure of heat, 
and heat motion is vibratory motion of the mole- 



MA TTER. 2 1 

cules, or multiple atoms of matter : therefore, tem- 
perature is the measure of vibratory motion of 
matter, and as there are many hundreds of degrees 
between the ordinary temperature of terrestrial 
bodies, and the point which is called the absolute 
zero of temperature, — so there must be a vast 
amount of vibratory motion in all matter. Indeed 
a wave of light forming a sunbeam, and passing 
through glass, has been by Herschel, happily lik- 
ened to a bird threading the mazes of a forest. One 
must certainly emancipate himself from the delusive 
notions of matter, as presented by the senses, and 
from the chimera, that substance is intrinsically 
what it seems to touch and vision. 

Intervals of thousands, or even of millions of 
times the diameters of the final units of matter may 
not express their distances apart, yet through which 
their individual power is so intense. There is really 
nothing extraordinary in this, when the minuteness 
of nature's processes are considered. Through the 
microscope we are introduced to orders of life so 
diminutive, that within the volume of the smallest 
grain of sand, move millions of animated beings, 
having phases of birth, growth, and reproduction ; 
and with organs of digestion, circulation, respiration, 
and locomotion ; and in every direction of inquiry, 
appears a world of life, whose being begins where 
the unaided perception of our senses ends. 

It is important to our general plan, to outline very 
briefly the nebular hypothesis of matter, which ex- 
plains the formation under the laws of gravitation 
of our solar system. 

This hypothesis has become the common property 



22 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

of science. And its probability has been fully es- 
tablished by mathematical and experimental demon- 
stration. It plainly would be obtrusive to submit 
these proofs here, as they are facts of physical sci- 
ence ; nor is it at all necessary, as we accept without 
question this grand illustration of the law of gravi- 
tation, universal, so far as our visible universe per- 
mits us to investigate. 

The facts of our planetary system indicate that it 
was once a connected mass with a uniform motion 
of rotation. Otherwise it is impossible to explain 
the common motion in the same direction of the 
planets, both orbital and axial ; why the planes of 
their orbits and those of their satellites and rings, 
all nearly coincide ; why their orbits differ but little 
from circles, and much besides. The theory sup- 
poses that loose masses of nebulous vapor, at first, 
without specific form or movement, gradually as- 
sumed, by virtue of gravitation, a regular spheroidal 
and rotating shape, lightest at the circumference, 
and gradually increasing in density toward the cen- 
tre, at which point the greatest density is reached. 
It supposes that such was the original form of suns ;, 
that the substance of these, in this diffused state, 
originally extended from their present condensed 
solar spheres, beyond the outermost limits of the 
orbits of the most remote of the planets which now 
revolve about them ; and that by the combined pro- 
cesses of rotation and condensation, successive con- 
centric rings were formed, beginning at the outermost 
limits, which rings were finally broken and rolled 
into spheres, becoming planets to the central body. 



MATTER. 23 

For instance, under the attractive force of all 
matter, the diffused vast nebulous mass would con- 
dense into a nebulous sphere, becoming constantly 
smaller, by which, according to mechanical laws, a 
motion of rotation, originally slow, would gradually 
become quicker and quicker. By the centrifugal 
force, which must act most energetically in the 
neighborhood of the equator of the nebulous sphere, 
masses would, from time to time, be torn away, and 
would continue their courses separate from the main 
mass, forming rings which subsequently became 
broken up, the matter composing them naturally 
agglomerating into spheres, single planets, similar 
to the great original sphere ; and by analogous pro- 
cesses of condensation and evolution of rings into 
planets, with satellites and rings, until finally the 
principal mass condensed itself into our sun. The 
following are, briefly stated, the principal physical 
facts from which the opinion is derived, that our own 
system has passed through the successive stages, 
from the nebulous to its present condition. 

The earth is an oblate spheroid flattened at the 
poles. Proofs of its former semi-fluid state, and of 
its gradual contraction by cooling, are numerous and 
common. There is great reason for believing " that 
its shape is due, rather to a withdrawal through this 
process, of portions least subject to centrifugal 
force, or removed from the equatorial parts, than 
that the existing form is a modification of that, origi- 
nally globular, by initial rotation. Since if the latter 
portions had, from a spherical shape, begun to be 
thrown outward, they could not have been restrained 



24 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

within limits by any counter force, and the flattening 
process must have continued indefinitely, had the 
velocity been undiminished. The detachment of 
annular rings is illustrated by those of Saturn. The 
separation of parts, by inequality of motion, and 
contraction, has its parallel in the recent rupture of 
Biela's comet." 

The planets exhibit regular graduations of densi- 
ties, from those nearest, to those most remote from 
the sun. Thus : " On the basis of mathematical 
calculations, Mercury must be about the weight of 
so much lead ; Venus is nearly six times the weight 
of so much water ; the earth, as a whole, is four and 
one half times the weight of water ; Mars, a little 
over three times the weight of water ; Jupiter is a 
small fraction over the weight of as much water ; 
Saturn is less than half that specific weight, or about 
the weight of so much cork ; and Herschel manifests 
a corresponding decrease of density. This gradua- 
tion is precisely what it should be, supposing that 
they were all formed by the operation of a common 
law, from an original sphere of fluid (gaseous) matter, 
which must have been most dense near the centre, 
and most rarefied at its outer surface." " There is a 
similar relation between the distances of the differ- 
ent planets. Proceeding outwards and regarding 
the asteroids as equivalent to one planet, each suc- 
cessive planet from Mercury is about double the 
distance of the previous planet from the sun, thus 
arguing their production from a common law." 

" It might be supposed that after the evolution of 
Mercury, the planet nearest the sun, there would still 



MATTER. 25 

be a residuum of nebulous matter surrounding the 
denser nucleus of the sun. Accordingly, we find an 
extensive mass of attenuated matter surrounding the 
sun, called the zodiacal light. And within this, yet 
more concentrated, and extending outward from the 
denser molten mass, is a fiery vapor, or incandescent 
atmosphere, enveloping the solar focus, and reaching 
from it to a vast distance." Now when it is remem- 
bered, that all nebulae have one or more bright foci, 
upon whose movements the incandescent vapor is 
attendant, the analogy between them and our sun 
and system is strengthened. 

Nor is this all. According to the principles by 
which periods of rotation maintain a relation to the 
mass of a given rotating body, it has been proved that 
the sidereal year of each planet actually corresponds 
to the period in which the sun must have rotated on 
his axis, supposing his mass to have extended to the 
orbits of such planets before they were thrown off. 
And the periods of rotation of the primary planets, 
with their mass in a state of vapor, extending to the 
orbits of their satellites, must in like manner have 
corresponded with the present orbital periods of 
those satellites. 

Besides the foregoing, is Kirkwood's law ; that 
" The square of the number of rotations of any given 
planet in its year, is to the square of the number of 
rotations of a second planet, as the cube of the 
diameter of the sphere of attraction of the first 
planet, is to the cube of the diameter of the sphere 
of attraction of the second planet. So definite is 
the relation between the forces and movements of 



26 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

the different planets, as to preclude all reasonable 
supposition that it came by chance." " The nebular 
theory answers to all the appearances of our system, 
and explains the motion of the planets, both primi- 
tive and present. It shows that the formation of 
the system has been successive, the most remote 
planets being the most ancient, and the satellites, 
the most modern. If from points of view like these, 
the stability of our system can scarcely.be regarded 
as absolute, what it leads us to suspect is, that by 
the continuous resistance of the general interstellar 
medium, ether, our system must at length be 
reunited to the solar mass from which it came, 
till a new dilatation of this mass from the extreme 
.heat shall occur in the immensity of time, and or- 
ganize in the same way a new system to follow a 
similar career. 

The process of re-uniting is, that under the resis- 
tance of the etherial medium, planetary rotations 
must become slower, the orbits smaller and less 
elliptical, and their periodic times shorter, until 
finally the planet plunges into the sun ; so that in a 
future too remote to be designated, all the bodies of 
our system will be re-joined to the solar mass from 
which they proceeded. All these prodigious alter- 
nations of destruction and renewal must take place 
without affecting yet more general phenomena : the 
mutual action of suns ; consequently these trans- 
formations of our system, too prodigious to be more 
than barely conceived of, can be only secondary, 
even local events, as compared to the far more 
extended, and even universal, transformations of 



MA TTER. 27 

consolidation and expansion of suns into suns, and 
those suns into other suns." 

In culling promiscuously and from many sources, 
the abundant proof of this grand theory, our purpose 
has been to place it in the clearest manner before 
the reader, avoiding much that is complicated of 
proof and details: if the facts given be accepted, 
the probabilities are more than contestable, for the 
summary of evidence amounts to conviction. It 
fulfils all the conditions of a rational hypothesis, for 
it not only explains all phenomena involved, but it 
is the only hypothesis that will do so ; besides it 
admits of unequivocal verification by experiment. 
It is the grandest summit from which we may view 
in its totality and endless perspective, the processes 
of Nature's fundamental law of gravitation. Alone, 
it is a wonderful vision ; but it is more ; for in its 
contemplation from the inchoate state and initial 
procedure of diffused matter to the composition of 
worlds, we see the simplicity and sublimity of Di- 
vine wisdom. In its light, our solar system vanishes 
to a mere point in space ; its matter, to the consolida- 
tion of a vast annular ring cast off from some mighty 
sun, and whirled into globular form with possibly 
many others, a mingled multitude of primaries and 
satellites from the central orb, with whose volume they 
were once inter-diffused in a single nebulous mass. 
And within the depths of far more remote space, it 
may be, many billions of inter-solar spans, is still a 
vaster centre, from which this last mass with innu- 
merable others was devolved, whose circumscrip- 
tion, though almost transcending conception, is yet 



28 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

definite ; for in its turn it is an expansion and con- 
centration of some greater approximation to the 
indefinite beyond. Still there is measurement, cir- 
cumference, cubicalness, and position of all these, 
as positive and limited as for the smallest object 
before us. We have the revolution of satellites 
with planets around suns ; suns around greater suns ; 
the greater suns around systems ; systems around 
greater systems ; the greater systems around clus- 
ters ; and these around immeasurable zones, multi- 
plied to incalculable immensity ; and yet beyond 
their confines, there remains always an unattainable 
extent, never to be compassed ; all agglomerations 
rolled from nebulous diffusions, — each the produc- 
tion of an origin beyond. Yet in the infinity of mat- 
ter and space, there is no absolute centre, for there 
is no circumference ; hence no grand source can be 
arrived at: nor are we in any sense concerned with 
this question, only with that of interbalancing limits, 
which probably space off here and there, at intervals, 
the stellar universe. The cause of the nebulous ex- 
pansion and diffusion of matter is, as has been stated, 
heat, generated by the conversion of the motion of 
masses through collision, into an equivalent motion 
of vibration (or heat motion) of their units. In re- 
turn, processes of condensation, the heat motion of 
these units is parted with by cooling of the matter. 
Helmholtz estimates that but one four hundred and 
fifty-fourth part of the original mechanical force in 
our planetary system remains ; but that the balance 
converted into heat, would still be adequate to raise 
a mass of water equal to the sun and planets taken 



MA TTER. 29 

together, — not less than twenty-eight millions of de- 
grees of the centigrade scale. 

It is seen, therefore, that, by far the largest pro- 
portion of the original heat of our system, has 
been radiated into space in the cooling and contrac- 
tion of the nebulous matter, to the present density 
of the planets and sun. The exterior boundary of 
the nebulous sphere was far beyond the outermost 
planet ; and the curve of separation of the first nebu- 
lar ring, where the centrifugal force, due to rotation, 
equalled the gravity, was greatly beyond the exist- 
ing orbit of that planet. It is presumptive, then, 
that our solar system, in its successive processes of 
transformation of the aggregate motion of its plane- 
tary bodies into the molecular motion of heat, gener- 
ated by plunging of the planets into the sun, and 
the loss of this heat by radiation into space, must 
in a remote future arrive at a state of entire con- 
solidation. 

Its orbital motion, which it now pursues around 
some distant centre, must in like manner cease by 
the ultimate integration and consolidation of its 
mass, and that of other systems, with that vast cen- 
tre from which they, in common, originated. And 
further, if there be conceded an indefinite space, 
beyond stellar space, unoccupied except by an 
etherial medium, similar to that of the inter-plan- 
etary spaces, the progression of all stellar matter to 
final consolidation and rest, precisely analogous to 
that above traced for our own system, is inevitable, 
at some period, which, however distant, is not of in- 
finite duration. For, however great the intervals of 



30 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

time, and however great the masses moving to com- 
bination in one general aggregate, they must ulti- 
mately convert their motion of translation into 
the molecular motion of heat, and by cooling, trans- 
fer this to the outer ether medium beyond them, 
there to pursue its endless way. 

It will be seen, that the foregoing conclusion is 
reached, under the assumption that the space occu- 
pied by the stellar universe is definite, or circum- 
scribed ; and that beyond it there is nothing to an 
infinite distance, but the etherial medium. But we 
see no good reason for departing from the conclusion 
already reached in these pages, that space is indefi- 
nitely occupied by forms of matter beyond our vis- 
ion, rigorously correspondent to those forms observed 
•by us ; that is that the stellar universe is of infinite 
extent ; for the universe is not a dot, nor its amplitude 
a disconformity. Under this aspect of matter, and 
under the most extended application of the nebular 
hypothesis, it may readily be shown, that all matter, 
so far as we can comprehend the meaning of the 
term " all " — will, in a similar manner, be transformed 
into a mechanical state, where further change under 
its own laws will be impossible. For let it be as- 
sumed (as will inevitably be the case) that suns with 
their satellites, groups with their suns, clusters with 
their groups, and zones with their clusters, should 
concentrate upon a common centre of gravity. 

The heat developed in this general integration of 
masses so vast, moving to collision through intervals 
almost immeasurable, under velocities constantly 
accelerated, would rarefy their matter to an incalcu- 



MA TTER. 3 1 

lable degree ; and of necessity, the nebulous dispersion 
following must overlap the orbits of stars immedi- 
ately beyond those concerned in this aggregation. 
" The resisting medium to the motion of such stars, 
being thus augmented, greatly expedites their mutual 
approach, under gravitation, to a centre ; and their 
subsequent expansion, in turn disturbs, in like man- 
ner, the equilibrium, and hastens the concentration 
of other systems. Therefore collisions throughout 
space conspire to bring about more frequent colli- 
sions ; and in continually extending the nebulous 
matter, the inter-radiation must inevitably terminate 
in the dispersion of all stellar matter whatever, into 
the nebulous form, and the ultimate equilibration of 
the heat of that matter." Here all further trans- 
formations must cease, — all operations of nature ; 
and the universe of matter would be doomed to 
eternal changeless monotony, unless the Omnipotent 
Controller of all should move within its depths the 
resuscitation. Upon any assumption then, and 
whichever way the subject be viewed, we arrive at 
a period of the material equilibration, and eternal 
changelessness of all matter of the universe. This 
result is inevitable, under any of three possible sup. 
positions : i.e., whether we regard the number of 
sidereal masses as limited, with an infinite ethereal 
continuity beyond ; whether interstellar ether and 
sidereal masses have limited boundaries, beyond 
which, to infinity of extent, there is nothing ; or 
whether an infinite space be occupied, as is that 
within the limits of our vision. There is a culmina- 
tion, a decay, and a dissolution, inexorably following 



32 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

upon the present view of the conservation of the 
force of the universe, and the operation of the laws 
of gravitation, which, so far as we are concerned, 
must be accepted as fully verified by the most ex- 
tended observation and experiment ; as much so, 
indeed, as any knowledge known to man. This 
unavoidable stagnation and practical death of the 
matter of the universe, in some distant future time, 
by no means infinite in duration, and brought about, 
as we have seen, by law, could in no other manner 
be reanimated to renewed form and to progressive 
life, than through an influence beyond law, and above 
it, and for which, law is insufficient. Here indeed in 
the material universal life, is a pleasing parallel to 
that terrestrial organic life, from which we are in- 
separable, — birth, growth, death. Now let it be re- 
membered, that whatever has been possible under 
the operation of law, in the tendency of matter to 
any final state, has, during the eternal duration that 
has preceded us, been already consummated. And, 
as it has been demonstrated, that matter, under 
existing law, is steadily pursuing a course, toward 
either permanent and universal consolidation into one 
mass, or toward universal diffusion and equilibration, 
from either of which states there is no self-reaction ; 
it necessarily follows, either that the fundamental 
laws of matter are not now, what they were at some 
anterior period of existence, or that matter has, at 
some former period, arrived at one of the states of 
stagnation and practical death already described ; 
and from that state, has been restored, by Divine 
agency, to the condition of renewed life as we now 
see it in the starry heavens. 



MA TTER. 33 

It has doubtless been observed that the foregoing 
conclusions have been based upon the presumption 
of the absolute indestructibility of mechanical en- 
ergy ; — or the impossibility of the destruction of one 
form of mechanical motion, unless at the instant of 
its disappearance there be generated an equivalent 
motion of another form, into which the first is 
converted. This is the modern doctrine of the con- 
servation of force, than which nothing is more funda- 
mental in the scientific mind. In accepting it, and 
following to its consequences the nebular hypothesis, 
and the accepted dogma of conservation, we arrived 
at the universal equilibration of matter ; — a condi- 
tion of eternal monotony and nullity, requiring for 
its re-vivification, the aid of the Omnipotent. And 
to the further conclusion, that unless the grand law 
of gravitation changes in each almost incommensur- 
able cycle, from concentration to dispersion, direct 
agency and interference are, in like manner, indis- 
pensable. Thus, when the processes of nature are 
measured by almost inestimable spans of time, we 
find the stability of what has seemed eternal constel- 
lations, vanishing like baseless fabrics. The majestic 
force of these mighty orbs, transformed into puny 
vibrations of atoms, and themselves dissolved into 
vapor ; or else, commingled and concentrated into 
one immeasurable mass, without light or life, pursuing 
through space an objectless, sullen way. 

We find the energy of matter, under the great law 
of gravitation, unable to perpetuate the life and vi- 
tality of nature. And no one will for an instant 
suppose, that matter could of itself divest itself of 
one law of action, and assume another. We are 



34 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

driven to the alternative and conclusion, then, that, 
unless the great laws of the conservation of energy, 
and of gravitation, are misty nothings, Divine agency 
must, from period to period, move within the infi- 
nite depths to resuscitate matter to life and purpose. 
Thus under the laws of science, considering matter 
as a whole, a vast aggregate, we are led by her ways, 
to universal spirit, without whose direction, matter 
and its laws are naught. And upon the dizzy heights 
to which we have been conducted, we have the most 
sublime conception, overshadowing all others, of a 
Supreme Ruler of the universe. 



CHAPTER III. 

FORCE. 

Conception of Force — Motion the Necessary State of all Matter — 
Law of Gravitation — Universal — Transmission Independent of a 
Medium — Primary Force — Its Location and Discussion — Repul- 
sive Action — Multiple Atoms — Elemental Matter — Primary and 
Innate Force, Definite and Quantitative. 

MOTION appears as a conditioned manifesta- 
tion of force, seen through matter, and in 
terms of time and space. All conceptions 
of matter are from resistances of positions in space, 
contrasted with positions offering no resistance. 
These positions of resistance have extension, and 
are seen to have no independent volition. The in- 
variable passiveness of this extension in three direc- 
tions, to which the term " matter " is applied, and 
the energy required for its motion through space, 
have created the distinction between inertness and 
force. To the passive helplessness of matter there 
is given the term " inertia." This is not a force, but 
the absence of force, though it measures the force ex- 
erted to produce motion. Experiences of force pre- 
sume, that substance at rest, is without the ability, 
of itself, to move; and that substance in motion, is 
without ability either to arrest or to vary its motion. 

35 



38 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

herent in the body. Motion was long considered 
an effect, definitely beginning and ending ; and of 
course the possibility of continuous motion without 
the continuous operation of the cause, even though 
the body was undisturbed, could not be entertained, 
since a resistance equal to the lost motion was un- 
thought of. This reasoning extended to all the 
changes of position noticed in celestial bodies ; and 
substituting occult qualities for inherent energies, 
attention was occupied in baseless hypothesis, en- 
cumbering observation, and retarding the acquisition 
of exact knowledge. 

We omit, as out of place, tedious and complicated, 
the various and ingenious theories advanced to 
account for the motions of the solar system ; and 
the steps in discovery, which led to the laws of 
planetary motion. Through the genius of Coper- 
nicus, of Galileo, and of Kepler, all astronomical 
questions of movement were finally merged in those 
of rational mechanics, in which motion is inseparable 
from the force producing, or tending to produce it. 
But in the mind of Newton, concurrent with the 
observed gravitation of planets toward the sun, was 
raised the question of the cause of such disposition. 
He believed the cause to reside within the bodies 
themselves, and reflecting upon the falling apple, 
he believed gravity to be identical with the planetary 
propensities. He demonstrated the truth of his 
supposition with respect to the moon, and then to 
the planets, that a force having the same law of vari- 
ation as to quantity and intensity, governs the mo- 
tions of all. And he justly concluded that the force 



FORCE. 39 

of gravitation within our solar system is an identi- 
cal force, as like effects proceed from like causes. 
From this great explanation of the cause of gravi- 
tation of bodies, the idea, for the first time within 
the history of progress, was finally seized upon, that 
matter was the seat of force ; and here was the idea 
of force, as a cause of motion, pursued to its logical 
sequence. Here the ultimate datum of conscious- 
ness is expressed in the analysis of a daily observed 
fact. It is a declaration to all time, that matter is 
an inert existence, in which force resides, causing its 
activity. The great law of gravitation discovered 
by Newton, is a law of the attraction between all 
masses of matter. The force, or attractive action, 
varies directly in the ratio of the masses acted upon ; 
and it varies inversely as the square of the distance 
through which it acts; thus, if of two masses, the 
amount of substance of both of which is represented 
by ten, the amount of their substance be made twenty, 
the attractive effort between them will be twice as 
much ; and if the distance between any two masses be 
at first ten, and it be diminished to one, the amount 
of attractive effort will be one hundred times greater 
than before. And it is also a consequence of this 
law, that right lines between masses are lines of 
intensity of attractive force. The universality of 
attraction of gravitation is now conceded in scien- 
tific thought. Proof from many sources is multi- 
plied to establish the truth of this most general 
physical law known to man. The deflection of the 
plumb line by masses of mountains in its vicinity, 
shows its earth action. That it is a law of sidereal 



40 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

matter, appears from observations upon double stars, 
their revolutions, and orbital cyles ; from cluster 
stars, their tendency to condensation toward a nu- 
cleus, and their globular figure ; from the spiral 
form assumed by nebulous matter; and from the 
spiral figure of an extensive class of galaxies of stars ; 
from the observed common tendency of many stars 
to recede from, and of many others to advance 
toward, a certain point in the celestial sphere ; from 
the motion of our solar system ; from the motions 
of many stars hitherto fixed, so far as our observa- 
tion extended. Analogy indicates a harmonious 
similitude between the laws of our system, and those 
governing, in remote regions, the same matter as 
that of our own system. " The universe is a sphere, 
whose centre is everywhere, and whose circumfer- 
ence is nowhere." Diversity in laws of motion and 
force in separate systems, all in motion, could not 
long sustain order in the universe ; sooner or later 
would ensue confusion and destruction. Everything 
indicates a grand and simple unity. Regularity and 
harmony can be universal, only on the ground of 
one controlling principle. 

It will be observed of the force of attraction of 
gravitation, that its exertion through space is inde- 
pendent of a material medium. It is not at all con- 
tingent upon atomic transfer. This, of course, is 
not comprehensible, but we are compelled to admit 
this truth. It is an immensity of energy, operating 
between vast aggregations of matter ; and no atten- 
uated medium, as interstellar ether, could convey, 
or contain forces so disproportionate to ether sub- 



FORCE, 41 

stance. But supposing that there was a dense 
intermedium between these great aggregations of 
matter, would the transfer of this attractive force 
through such a medium be any more conceivable 
than before ? One of the two suppositions must be 
adopted, yet one is no more intelligible or conceiv- 
able than the other. Both imply an influence of 
traction extended through space, and whether sup- 
posed through a material intermedium or not, it is 
made no more intelligible. 

The common experiment of the magnet and a piece 
of iron demonstrates the full possibility of such 
action without a continuous intermedium. 

All matter, then, is constrained to follow the direc- 
tion of action of an inbeing force. Unless we assert, 
that that which is moved, and that which causes 
movement are identical, which is contrary to experi- 
ence. The one expresses passiveness : the other, the 
capacity to impart motion and to govern its direction. 
Force implies a resistance ; and the operation of force, 
an effort opposed to a resistance. The evidence of the 
senses is that the universe is made up of matter and 
force ; or of force and that which is in itself without 
force, the last the burden, the first the carrier. To 
affirm that matter actively resists, or exerts effort, is 
to affirm that it is a force. If it be a force, the resist- 
ance of a mass to movement must be accepted as 
the result of a multitude of merely mathematical 
points of resistance, aggregated, yet without sub- 
stance. Each point under this supposition is an 
effort of repulsion, opposing efforts of impulsion 
upon it. And the world of matter consequently 



42 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

presents nothing more than immaterial points of 
force, opposing themselves, without any apparent 
cause, to other points of active effort, similar to 
them ; sometimes overpowering them, and some- 
times failing to do so ; sometimes visible, sometimes 
not so, — all obvious absurdities. The only alterna- 
tive then is to accept, as existing, substance, real, 
final and inert ; whose resistance to motion is merely 
passive, and conveying no idea of real energy. 
Force and matter compose the whole of the phe- 
nomena of nature, and indeed of the natural uni- 
verse, so far as it physically presents itself, in all its 
variety and beauty. And if the phenomena of 
nature be subject to invariable law, then the forces 
of matter are definite in quantity and measure, and 
.invariable in action ; otherwise order and regularity 
must proceed from disorder and a fantastic uncer- 
tainty. Admitting that there is an attractive force 
exerted between masses of all matter, it follows that 
this force is a resultant of the attraction of all the 
component forces of the final units of the mass ; for 
all masses are made up of such units, and in them 
must reside the force of attraction ; in other words, 
they are the real loci of the attractive energy : and 
any one of them exerts an energy in the exact pro- 
portion to its quantity of matter, or magnitude. 
This energy of simple attraction residing in the final 
units of all substance, will be hereinafter designated, 
for the sake of brevity, as primary force, in contra- 
distinction to secondary force, represented by motion 
of matter, which it may modify. 

This primary force, or principle of energy must 



FORCE. 43 

always be resident in matter ; — if not, it may exist 
outside of matter, as an unlocalized entity, or exist- 
ence ; — an agent of pure immateriality, and of course, 
in all its relations, necessarily indifferent to law. 
Matter, then, would be sometimes influenced by it, 
and sometimes not. It would be sometimes deprived 
of motion, and sometimes tend to excessive motion, 
under its influence ; this is contrary not only to all law, 
but to all experience, — and therefore such assumption 
must be rejected. Similarly it may be shown, that 
the resident primary force of any ultimate unit of 
matter is always the same ; whatever its power is, 
that it must forever remain. Otherwise matter may 
of itself augment or diminish, possess or dispossess 
itself, ad libitum, of energy. As the primary force 
is then for each unit, a definite power, and the same 
for each mass, the quantity of primary force in the 
universe is unchangeable. Nothing can be clearer 
than that there can be no increase, or decrease, of 
this innate force of matter. If so, matter may have 
originated, and may still originate motion ; which is 
contrary to any idea of harmony or law. Of course, 
we do not here refer to the mere intensity of attrac- 
tion between masses or units, which is greater as the 
interval between them is less. And here again, in 
this very decrease of attractive energy, or primary 
force, with increase of distance, may be recognized 
all the peculiarities of a limited force ; — a diminished 
capacity to act. 

Let there be now considered this primary attrac- 
tive energy, whose presence is confirmed in all mat- 
ter, bearing in mind, in the exploration of this 



44 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

unknown, that the uttermost limit of research and 
argument can attain to nothing more than reason- 
able probability ; and that this is also the limit of all 
science not susceptible of experimental demonstra- 
tion. Let there be imagined a final spherical unit of 
matter at rest, and isolated from all influences, and 
though its moving principle be absolutely immate- 
rial, yet for illustration, likening it to a viscous elastic 
fluid, it is obvious that this principle of energy will 
be symmetrically distributed with respect to the unit 
substance. To suppose otherwise, would be to as- 
sume an effect without a cause. Besides, if the resi- 
dent energy were unsymmetrically distributed, the 
unit would assume motion in the direction of most 
energy. Now if the second like unit be placed 
within the influence of the first, the force of each 
becomes more concentrated in the segment of each 
nearest the other, and motion ensues, because of the 
preponderance of force, in the direction of concen- 
tration. 

Since matter can, of itself, have no power to pro- 
duce motion, the cause of motion is the sympathetic 
exertion of primary force, towards primary force in 
other matter. Not of matter towards matter, for 
matter is inertness ; not of matter towards primary 
force, for the same reason. The tendency to the 
equality of distribution of force in matter, is a con- 
dition of the existence of associated force and matter ; 
and any law of the action of force, however funda- 
mental, is subordinate to this condition of the fixation 
of primary attractive force in matter ; otherwise, in 
the tendency of force toward force, it would desert 



FORCE. 45 

its own matter. In the tendency of force toward 
other force, there is ahvays a limitation of its action, 
which is the degree to which the symmetry of dis- 
tribution of force in each unit of matter may be 
disturbed. The universal inclination of matter to 
union, would be consummated by the complete con- 
tact of the final units of matter, and the end of all 
life, were this not prevented, — as we hope to show — 
by this principle of limitation. Though the perpet- 
ual tendency of the primary attractive force of every 
unit, must be to symmetrically distribute itself with 
respect to the unit magnitude ; — the consummation 
of this effort is as perpetually prevented by the in- 
terassociation and motion of all matter. 

Let us now return to the supposed case of two 
units of matter, isolated from all other attractive in- 
fluences. As they approach each other, the energy 
in the part of each situated nearest the other, is 
greater than in the opposite part. An energy due 
to the closer proximity of these parts ; an intensity 
due to their less distance. The closer the units ap- 
proximate, the greater this intensity ; when almost, 
or quite in contact, their forces have become almost, 
or quite, one force, with by far its greatest intensity 
near the almost, or quite, joined segments. This is 
contrary to the law of existence of force and mat- 
ter ; that is, that force shall be symmetrically distribu- 
ted with respect to it : hence, when the degree of 
approximation of the units is to actual contact, the 
forces will no longer strive to unite in the middle of 
the units, but will exert themselves to equal distribu- 
tion in the two units. Consequently as these ener- 



46 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

gies tend to recede to more uniformly distribute 
themselves, the units themselves will, under their in- 
fluence, recede from each other ; and this motion 
will continue, until again counterbalanced by the in- 
tegral attractive energies of each unit, and these last 
positions will be their positions of equilibrium with 
respect to each other. But it is self-evident, that 
these positions of equilibrium could never become 
positions of rest ; and that if two units could be 
isolated, as these are supposed to be, that they 
would oscillate back and forth, to and from each 
other, forever. 

It is impossible, but that, as the two units ap- 
proach to contact, there should be a greater inten- 
sity of energy at the parts of the two units nearest 
contact ; and that there will be a point when the 
energy of each unit mass will resist this inequality 
of intensity, since it is opposed to the equality of 
distribution of energy; and that they will, therefore, 
resist a motion which tends to make greater this 
inequality. For as the matter of both units tend to 
become one unit mass, to that degree do their ener- 
gies tend to become more the character of a single 
unit energy, and will resist, accordingly, what is 
contrary to the condition of existence of that energy, 
that is, inequality of distribution. It might appear 
that the position of equilibrium with respect to 
motion, of these two units, would be when their 
surfaces were just in contact. This would be the 
case, were it not for the fact, that intensity of action 
of the force of each unit is greatest on the segments 
in contact ; therefore the quantity of force there is 



FORCE. 47 

greatest, and this must cause the recession of the 
units to some point removed from actual contact. 
This causes the never-ending oscillation of all final 
units of matter, without which neither life in nature, 
nor difference of density of substance, would be pos- 
sible. 

We now turn to inquire whether there could exist 
in matter an absolute primary repulsive force, as 
marked, as distinct, as sharply defined, as is primary 
attractive force. For it is asserted by physicists, that 
when units of matter approach to final contact, that 
instantly (and of course without explainable cause) 
the admitted attractive power, innate in each unit, 
is at once paralyzed, and that there is instantly 
generated (from nothing) the unlimited repulsive 
force, compelling the units to separate ; and that 
then, in turn, the repulsive force becomes dormant, 
and the attractive force is awakened to effort. All 
this is without cause, inconceivable, and entirely 
presumptive. But it is a part of the physical philos- 
ophy taught at the present day, which assigns to 
each unit of matter, not only the distinct and sepa- 
rate forces of attraction and repulsion, but also 
special magnetic, and special electric forces ; and a 
special chemical force, or affinity, peculiar to each 
kind of matter ; all of these distinct and separate 
special energies, co-resident in each unit of matter. 
Is it any wonder that with the scientific imagination 
running riot in such absurd assumptions, that igno- 
rant and blatant scoffers loudly declare the omnipo- 
tence of matter, and denounce the necessity for 
either spiritual wisdom or power? Faraday, pro- 



48 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

foundly convinced that notions of an attractive 
force, suddenly disappearing upon the near approach 
of units of matter, ignored entirely the principle of 
the conservation of force, says : " The idea of a force 
simply removed or suspended, without a transferred 
exertion in some other direction, appears to me to 
be absolutely impossible." The idea of a force, 
whatever its nature, changing its direction of action 
from attraction to repulsion, passing through zero to 
an opposite energy, involves a change of the nature 
of force, which is contradictory to permanent law ; 
and it is wholly antagonistic to the law of conserva- 
tion of force, for there is no " transferred motion." 
In the case, however, of our supposed two units of 
matter, it will be observed that there is a " transfer 
of exertion " of their forces on contact of the units, 
and that is, toward equality of distribution of force 
with respect to matter. It is plain that if there be a 
distinct force characterizing each different elemen- 
tary mass of matter, (a peculiar form of force for 
each element), then each of these peculiar forces 
must reside in the units of the mass ; for in all cases, 
peculiarities of qualities must be referable to the 
composing units. Therefore, under existing views of 
matter, each final unit must be invested with four 
distinct energies : attraction, repulsion, chemical, and 
polar. The harmonious association, yet independent 
action of these forces, each of which is, at times, 
predominant to the exclusion of the others, not only 
transcends analysis, but opposes rationality. Yet if 
we accept a duality, as primary attraction and repul- 
sion, we may as well accept any plurality. Qne is 



FORCE. 49 

quite as conceivable as the other. Polar and chemi- 
cal forces unquestionably exist ; but we shall en- 
deavor to show that they are contained within the 
law of action of one primary attractive force. Of 
course, it can never be positively determined that a 
variety of inherent energies does not exist in each 
final unit of matter. Actual analysis can obviously 
take us no further than elemental matter^ and this 
we can examine only in a state of aggregation ; and 
only through, and by means of those very forms of 
energy, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and chem- 
ical affinity, all mutually convertible, and which have 
been, and are still received, as exponents of the 
inbeing qualities in the units, and of the same nature 
as their aggregations. Color, hardness, taste, fusi- 
bility, etc., are not to be considered, as they are 
qualities of aggregate matter, which vanish with its 
disintegration. But there is a negation of a multi- 
plicity of primary energies, to be found in its very 
irrationality. This doctrine has arisen as a conven- 
ience of hypothesis, and now having served its pur- 
pose in the growth of science, it should be permitted 
to pass away, for it is no longer justifiably maintained. 
It elevates the purely material to the region of the 
vague, the indeterminate ; and presenting at the 
outset an incomprehensible barrier to any under- 
standing of either matter or force, merges both into 
the mysterious, and, with the ignorant, even into the 
supernatural. The evidence of a primary force or 
gravitating force of matter, has a broader deriva- 
tion, and a completeness that belong to no other. 
It is unchangeable in character, belongs to all matter 



52 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

of the smaller unit would be absolutely nothing, 
that of the larger is a real amount. What is true of 
the forces of these single units, is true of masses; 
for, as the units join, there is a confluent action of 
their forces ; and the range of attractive effort is 
therefore extended by the increase of mass, just in 
the ratio of that increase ; for plainly, such increase 
is the increase of the quantity of primary force at the 
origin. The capacity of the attraction of a mass 
then, comes from the association of the unit ener- 
gies, and is a resultant effect of these components. 
The variation of intensity of the force with distance, 
may be compared with that of a definite amount of 
light ; it may be diffused at the expense of intensity, 
or concentrated at the expense of quantity. When 
the distance between two masses of matter is less- 
ened, and the intensity of their attraction becomes 
greater, it is not that there has been any creation of 
force or energy, but because that degree of intensity, 
or of energy, is an energy due to that distance, and is 
a potential force of matter, always the same, whether 
masses are within each other's attractive range or 
not. There is great reason for believing, (but the 
evidence is too voluminous to be detailed here), that 
matter, instead of being diffused into its final units, 
and those units acting separately, or as so many 
unit energies, is in a molecular form, in its minute 
activities, or in the form of a vast number of units 
united into one atom ; and that in these molecules, 
or multiples, the units of each act in concert in all 
the different affections of matter, such as light, heat, 
chemical, magnetic, and electric manifestations. This 



FORCE. 53 

hypothesis is well sustained and is contrary neither 
to observation nor to experiment. A volume of water 
dashes from a height, encounters resistance from the 
air, breaks up into masses, and then into drops. In- 
crease the dispersive force, and the drops disinte- 
grate into a lesser magnitude, correspondent to the 
motion ; and by a still greater agitation, as when 
water forms steam, and steam is heated to a high 
degree, the particles become lost to perception. The 
self-maintaining power of a volume being relatively 
greater as a body is smaller, the effort of the attrac- 
tion soon disappears in the spherical figure of the 
drop. And none can presume that that figure is lost 
in any succeeding division of the unit drops. How- 
ever far the agitation extend, it is still a multiple 
spherical atom so long as its hydrogen and oxygen 
are united. 

Mercury, less liable to " wet " surfaces, sustains 
itself in larger spherical globules, which are smaller 
in the ratio of greater motion to which they are sub- 
jected. By great heat (vibration), Mercury is vola- 
tilized and invisible, but the form doubtless persists 
as spheres. The solution of bodies in liquids, the 
freezing of water, the isomerism of bodies, and many 
other phenomena confirm the idea of the multiple 
atom or molecular constitution of matter ; and as the 
forces of each unit are central, it follows that the 
form of multiple atoms is the sphere. Of course, 
it will be understood, from what has been said in 
the foregoing pages, that the final units making up 
any multiple atom, or molecule, though acting in 
each molecule as a unit of force, are by no means 



54 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

joined together by actual contact. Intervals of 
thousands of times their diameters may not express 
the distances apart, of these units, through which 
their individual power is so intense. And it will 
be remembered further, that not only are the units 
of each molecule constantly in a state of incon- 
ceivably rapid vibration, but that the molecules, or 
multiple atoms, themselves, of any mass, must also 
maintain a state of swift oscillations ; — for the rea- 
son, that no two multiple atoms of any mass in the 
universe could, by any possibility, have precisely the 
same amount of motion ; since no two portions of 
any mass of matter, however large or small, would 
receive from surrounding media precisely the same 
amount of material impulses, or incident motion ; — 
and that the motion of the molecules and units is 
brought about by their constant interchange of dif- 
ference of motion in the mass, and its tendency to 
equilibration. 

It is now necessary to call to mind what has been 
said of the intense heat consequent upon the impact 
of sidereal bodies, and the immense diffusion of 
matter accompanying this heat ; bearing in mind 
that what we call heat, is nothing more than vibra- 
tory motion of molecules. In the cooling of this 
matter just the inverse process takes place to that of 
heating it, or as in the breaking up of water and 
mercury, as has been described, — that is, the final 
units of matter would first coalesce ; then molecules ; 
then groups of molecules having about the same mo- 
tion ; and last, great aggregates of these groups would 
form into masses. To explain this further. In the 



FORCE. 5 5 

collision of celestial bodies above referred to, their 
motion of translation is transferred into the shiver- 
ing, vibratory or heat motion ; and this heat is es- 
timated to be more than twenty thousand times 
greater than could be produced by artificial means. 
Of course, all endeavors to ascertain the relative 
density of the incandescent matter when in this 
condition of extreme heat, would surpass conjecture 
itself. 

The intervals between the final units of the most 
solid masses of matter have been compared by 
some physicists to the spaces between stars in the 
heavens ; — and of course, in the utter disintegration 
of stellar matter following collision, these intervals 
are greatly increased. But however great the heat, 
and diffusion of matter, the attraction of units for 
each other will maintain its continuity ; for without 
their mutual relation as to motion, there could be no 
extension of volume. With the partial destruction 
of heat motion, by radiation into space, beyond the 
diffused heated matter, begins, as has been said, the 
first stage of contraction. And as the forces acting 
are but two, that of mechanical heat motion obstruct- 
ing, and that of attraction promoting the concentra- 
tion, it follows from well known laws of mechanics, 
that these beginnings of aggregation will be the sepa- 
ration of unlike units from each other, or of units 
of unequal magnitudes, and the formation into 
groups, of like units ; and this process will continue, 
throughout the entire nebulous volume however 
large. For similar units will be similarly acted upon 
and will similarly act and react ; and under the laws 



56 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

of force, the differences of motion of different orders 
of units as to magnitude, must result in their forma- 
tion into groups of units of the same order. For 
similar reasons groups thus formed of the same order 
of units will contain approximately the same number 
of units. Groups of the largest units will be of the 
largest dimensions, and these groups and their units 
will have the least motion ; while those composed 
of units of the smallest magnitude will, be of the 
smallest dimensions, and have the most motion. 
These primary groups of matter, the first stage of 
concentration, we designate as molecules, or multiple 
atoms. 

It is plain that they are not again resolvable into 
their final units, save by a return of the great heat 
of the diffusion in which they were once immerged. 
The multiple atom of matter, then, is indestructible, 
so far as we are concerned, and it is the unit to which 
we must look in all considerations of primary force. 

Following mechanical laws of force and motion, 
these primary groups of multiple atoms of like units 
will finally unite, as in course of time the heat of the 
nebulous matter diminishes, and they will form 
elemental matter of like multiple atoms. By great 
heat then, all matter can be volatilized ; and by the 
greatest artificial cold, all gases can be reduced to a 
liquid state ; and by analogy, if we had the means 
to bring about an absolute zero of temperature, we 
could solidify all matter. We must conclude then, 
that the present state of aggregation of matter is 
due to a certain amount of heat retained in, or to 
oscillatory motion of its multiple atoms ; and as no 



FORCE. 57 

substance has absolute hardness, there is vibration 
of the final units and multiple atoms of all matter. 
There remains one other question relating to the 
forces of a multiple atom, or molecule, so material 
to an understanding of the action of forces in chemi- 
cal, and other phenomena, that at the risk of being 
tedious, we find it important to our purpose to ex- 
plain. For while such matters may be intelligible 
enough to the man trained to science, they are not 
so to the average reader. And the whole idea here 
is to appeal to that class, who, with general informa- 
tion, are inclined to general scepticism ; and who 
yield to science so many possibilities, that when 
they hear it proclaimed by the atheist that nature is 
an all-sufficient power, they are very apt to entertain 
to some extent his doctrine. Let us return to two 
units of matter conceived to be isolated in space 
from all attraction, except that of each for the other. 
If the unit a is of greater magnitude than the unit b, 
it exerts toward b no more attraction than b extends 
to it. Sympathetic tractive effort cannot excite a 
greater response than it conveys ; otherwise there is 
no reason why the earth should not move with as 
great rapidity toward a falling object, however small, 
as the object toward the earth. Let it now be sup- 
posed that one of these units, as a, is the central 
unit of a compact mass or sphere of units. Plainly, 
since the whole energy possible to any final unit of 
matter is a fixed and definite quantity, it results 
that the sum of the attractive effort of all the other 
units for this central unit is exactly equal to its 
energy, and no more: — and that its energy being so 



58 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

divided is for each of them only a fractional part of 
what it was for the unit b, in the first supposition. 
If now we suppose a spherical shell of units one foot 
in diameter, exactly conterminous with the sphere of 
units, yet still within the attractive limit of the unit 
#, its whole attraction is again divided between the 
units of the shell, as well as the sphere, and is less 
for each than before, for otherwise there can be no 
limit to the power of any unit. It must further be 
obvious, that when we speak of the intensity of attrac- 
tion at any distance between two masses or units of 
matter, we can mean nothing more than the quan- 
tity of attractive effort at that distance. It follows 
therefore, since the whole quantity of attraction pos- 
sible to any unit is definite and fixed, like that of 
cfny other force, that if a part of this attraction is 
employed in any one way, it is tied up to that extent 
from exertion in any other way : — and that just to 
the extent that it is released from such employment, 
it has that much more energy free. Now let it be 
supposed that the small sphere or mass of units 
around the unit a, expands to the limit of the spher- 
ical shell ; plainly with the increase of distance from 
a, of the units, some of the attraction of a is re- 
leased from employment and restored to itself. 
What is true of the unit a, is true of all the other 
units of the small sphere ; each has restored to it by 
the expansion of the mass, and separation of the 
units, a portion of its energy, which is withdrawn 
from attractive effort, by reason of the greater dis- 
persion of those units. 

From the foregoing it will be seen that in a mul- 



FORCE. 59 

tiple atom, or molecule, composed of many final 
units, in the ratio that those units are separated by 
expansion of the multiple atom, due to an increased 
vibration, to that degree are their energies released ; 
— released from concentrative employment, and may 
therefore in each unit act more individually. The 
consequence of this would be that the whole energy of 
this multiple atom, toward another situated within the 
limit of attraction of its final units, is greater than be- 
fore the expansion of the atom ; since each unit has 
more free or unemployed primary or attractive force 
than before. We have been thus diffuse upon 
this subject at the risk of wearying, because it is 
upon this principle, as we shall show, that depends 
the chemical energy of matter ; and not because 
the final units of each elemental substance are 
invested with a peculiar inherent force distinct 
and separate from any other substance. As we 
were conducted to a view of the Infinite Spirit in 
reasoning upon the majestic forms of matter in its 
vast aggregation ; so in these final and inconceiv- 
ably minute forms, it may be shown that there is 
the perfume of spirit power, though masked for a 
time, it may be, under the domino of attractive 
energy. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FORCES OF THE PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS 
OF MATTER. 

Heat and Light Motion — Interchange — Manifestation of Electrical 
Phenomena — Mode of Motion — Proceeds from One Primary 
Force — How Produced — Mutual Interchange of all Physical 
Forces of Matter — Probable Nature of Magnetism and Elec- 
tricity — How they Differ — Direction of Transfer of their Ener- 
. gies. 

THE physical affections of matter, now known as 
modes of motion, are light, heat, electricity, 
magnetism, and chemical interchange. Our 
only purpose in briefly alluding to each, is to show 
that matter and force are things of the utmost sim- 
plicity, so far as they are presented to our senses by 
their phenomena ; that there are no occult properties, 
nor mysterious fluids, nor indescribable entities, 
whose power and agencies are immeasurable and un- 
fathomable. Of course, we know nothing, and can 
know nothing, of the final nature of either matter, 
or its inherent primary force ; but we do know, that 
both matter and force are governed by laws ; that 
their creation or annihilation is unthinkable ; that 
matter is real, so far as anything can be real to us, 
and that each of its final divisions, or ultimate units, 

60 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. 6 1 

is invested with an inherent and definite energy, 
that is forever fixed in quantity, and that it can 
never be increased, or diminished, under existing 
laws of nature. 

We purpose to show how, under the operation of 
one innate primary force, attraction, all the above- 
named affections are produced ; that each is a mere 
mechanical effect of the motion of matter and this 
one force ; and that as neither, under any circum- 
stances, can produce, nor bring about, life, there is 
no reason to believe that operating jointly they 
would of themselves approximate any closer to that 
result. 

HEAT AND LIGHT MOTION. 

Heat and light are merely modes of vibratory 
motion of matter, though the precise nature of this 
motion is beyond analysis, the inquiry being limited 
from the very constitution of things. The commu- 
nication of heat is the communication of motion, 
and its effect is to separate from each other the 
multiple atoms, or constituent molecules of matter. 
It has already been shown why, upon the contact 
of final units of matter, they repel each other ; and 
for the same reason, two multiple atoms, each con- 
taining a vast number of such units, would, when 
thrust together, repel each other. This makes the 
elastic effect of matter. Vibration without elas- 
ticity, or the power to return, is impossible. When 
the multiple atoms of any volume receive an im- 
pulse, from other atoms communicating more mo- 
tion to them, their vibratory swings are longer, and 



62 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT, 

more energetic, they occupy more space, and the 
whole volume of the matter affected, expands. The 
effect of heat upon all matter, with one or two ex- 
ceptions, is to expand it ; and casting aside all ideas 
of heat and cold as sensations, heat is simply the 
motion of expansion of bodies, through incessant 
atomical motion. Justly then, all inquiries upon 
heat relate solely to degrees of motion. Heat mo- 
tion applied at any point of a solid volume of mat- 
ter, thrusts the atoms there further apart ; opposed 
to their motion, is the united reactionary effect of 
the other atoms, or their tendency to maintain their 
positions against displacement. But if the extrane- 
ous motion be continued, it overcomes the succes- 
sive degrees of resistance, and disintegration follows. 
•With yet further persistence of the motion, the 
vibration of the atoms is increased, each occupies 
more space, and the volume further rarefied, passes 
from the liquid to the gaseous state. Contrariwise: 
as heat signifies motion of atoms, so cold implies 
the absence of such motion ; and other things equal, 
the lower the temperature of any body, the nearer 
must be their constituent atoms. Since heat and 
cold represent degrees of motion, no real distinction 
exists between degrees of heat and degrees of cold ; 
and any instrument for their measurement, estimates 
simply the relative amount of motion in the matter 
tested. What has been said of heat and cold being 
merely relative degrees of motion, applies, mutatis 
mutandis, to heat and light ; they are merely degrees 
of motion, since most forms of matter become incan- 
descent by increasing their amount of heat motion. 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. 63 

When a body or surface reflects vibrations of certain 
degrees of rapidity, the eye is affected, and we see 
the surface presented to view, color being, of course, 
modifications of this vibration. 

Consciousness of heat, of cold, of light, of color, 
then, is only the consciousness of amounts of im- 
pinging motion, from material media surrounding 
us. Just as there is an upper and a lower limit to 
the range of hearing, and in light, degrees of inten- 
sity in both directions, beyond our perception, so in 
heat there is a maximum and a minimum of inten- 
sity impossible for us to realize, the limit of ex- 
perience of heat motion being but a ringer's span to 
the inestimable range above and below it. Even if 
it be supposed that all ultimate units of matter are 
of the same magnitude, it would still be impossible 
that any two aggregations of matter in nature should 
possess the same degree of heat motion, for the rea- 
son that they could not simultaneously occupy the 
same position in space, and would therefore be sub- 
ject to unlike incident forces each instant of time. 
Still less is this possible under all the diversity of 
the differences of magnitude of the final units of dif- 
ferent elements of matter. 

This inequality of heat is, however, regulated, and 
meets with speedy distribution by the never-ending 
process of interchange of motion through the inter- 
connection of all matter. Each body possessed of 
an excess of heat motion tends to impart it to con- 
tiguous bodies of less motion ; not because these 
bodies extract, or withdraw of themselves its motion, 
but because motion always follows lines of least 



64 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

resistance ; and the matter presenting least resist- 
ance to the heat and motion is, — other things equal, 
— that having the least motion of its own to counter- 
act, before its motion becomes synchronous with 
the imposed motion. The direction of interchange 
of heat motion, then, will always be from the mass 
or volume of greater heat motion, to that of less 
heat motion. As the units of different elements of 
substance are, under our theory of matter, of differ- 
ent magnitudes, the units of each element have 
different degrees of vibration, even though each has 
received the same amount of heat motion. 

For the same force will impress upon different 
magnitudes, different velocities ; yet the product of 
each magnitude by its velocity, will be the same as 
the product of any other magnitude by its velocity. 
Therefore, under the same temperature, the state of 
aggregation of different elements is dissimilar ; some 
must take the solid, some the liquid, and some the 
gaseous form. It will probably have been concluded 
before now by the reader, that such a thing as the 
isolation of any unit, or mass of matter in the uni- 
verse, from any other unit, or mass, is an impossi- 
bility : each unit is, through its primary attractive 
force ami motion, constantly in touch, with respect 
to influence with other units. Refined and conclu- 
sive experiments indicate that all space is occupied 
by a substance (ether) surpassingly rarefied and elas- 
tic, through which the radiant impulses of light and 
heat make their way. By its elasticity, this medium 
is uniformly diffused, both in stellar space, in what 
we call vacuo, and in the interstitial space of the 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. 6$ 

multiple atoms of all bodies, whether solid or fluid. 
Heat and light motion are, by it, transferred not 
only through our most perfect vacuum, but they tra- 
verse in all directions inter-stellar space ; it is a 
universal bond of dynamic force. All evidence cul- 
minates to render it conclusive, that light and heat 
are only different degrees of the same form of motion 
or dynamic energy. The laws of their phenomena 
are the same in all respects. 

And there are no data from which it can be sup- 
posed that light may be generated by other modes, 
or in other ways, than those developing heat ; and 
there is no change or manifestation impressed upon 
light motion, that does not effect the associated heat 
in the same manner. The incident velocity of both 
is the same ; both are diffused at the same rate in 
the ethereal medium ; and both are by the same 
laws transmitted, reflected, absorbed and refracted. 

ELECTRICAL AND MAGNETIC PHENOMENA, AND THEIR 
EXPLANATION UNDER ONE PRIMARY FORCE. 

In considering electricity and magnetism, no more 
than in the other physical affections of matter, do 
we propose to discuss the forms and laws of their 
manifestations, and the many variations of these laws, 
and the vast array of facts which unite to confirm 
the view of a single primary innate energy in matter ; 
but simply to point out the correspondence of their 
phenomena to that of matter directed by a single 
primary attractive energy. 

There are probably in nature no physical manifes- 



66 MATTEL, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

tations, which have so axiomatically fixed images in 
the mind of distinct repulsive, and attractive energies, 
as those witnessed in magnetism and electricity. 
Though it is true, that some advance has been made, 
in abandoning the old notion of incorporated fluids ; 
and it has been well said, that, " The supposition of 
a gravitating fluid might, with as much propriety, 
be insisted upon to explain gravitation, or a cohesive 
fluid to explain cohesion." But there are great 
numbers of otherwise well-informed people, who 
entertain the idea that there actually exist entities 
like electricity and magnetism, chemical affinity, 
vital force, etc., attached to matter, and yet not of 
themselves material, though subject to material laws. 
To these various entities, prodigies of performance 
are conceded by such minds, which are satisfied to 
extend their inquiries no further. 

Electricity is now defined in science as being a 
" compound force, remarkable for the peculiar form 
of action and reaction which it exhibits ; this kind 
of action and reaction follows the same law of equal- 
ity and opposition in its manifestations, as that which 
is exhibited more obviously in the phenomena of 
mechanics." This explanation implies two opposite 
forces, attraction and repulsion. That there maybe 
these two forces located in all matter, (for all may 
be to some extent both magnetic and electric) one 
of two conditions of matter must exist ; either all 
masses must have just as many units invested with 
inherent repulsion as there are units invested with 
inherent attraction ; or, each unit must be equally 
invested with an inherent force of repulsion, and an 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. 6j 

inherent force of attraction, co-equal and co- 
resident. 

Either of these conclusions is utterly illogical and 
unthinkable. Besides, if matter were so conditioned, 
there could be no resultant attractive energy in the 
mass whatever. Without further discussion, we pro- 
ceed to illustrate the phenomena, under the pre- 
sumption that all matter is identical ; and that each 
final unit is invested with one force of attraction 
varying in quantity with its mass or magnitude. If 
any two molecules, or multiple atoms of like units 
and motion be within the range of each other's at- 
traction, they will continue to attract until contact. 
The aggregate force of each atom acting toward the 
other, being the sum of the unit forces free to act, 
(see last part of chapter on force) or the resultant 
free force of each. As the two atoms come into 
contact, the two resultant primary energies tend to 
distribute themselves so as to establish the uniform- 
ity of force, with respect to matter. 

But since in their nearest segments, are the great- 
est quantity and intensity of energy, and as neither 
atom can merge into the other, (they being inde- 
structible,) the position of equilibrium of these two 
atoms is that at some point of actual separation. 
And they would therefore recede from each other 
immediately after contact ; as already explained in 
the case of two final units of matter, in the chapter 
on force. The atoms are supposed, for simplicity, 
to be of like units and motion. If, however, the 
units of one atom, as a, have more motion than 
the ether atom, b 7 on their contact, a portion of its 



68 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

motion would pass to atom b } and b, being now more 
expanded than before, would have more free energy. 
If now a third atom, c, was situated next beyond that 
to which the motion passed, it would be attracted 
by b, and would attract it more than before. Atoms 
b and c would therefore come to contact, atom c 
would receive more motion, and would then be more 
expanded and have more free energy than before. 
In like manner the motion would pass to d, to /*, 
etc., each atom, in its turn, receiving more motion 
by contact with the atom preceding it, and having 
more free energy, and then, parting with its excess 
of motion, and its energy, it would return to its nor- 
mal state. It will be remembered in the chapter on 
force, (last pages) the explanation was made, as to 
why in the expansion of any multiple atom, the 
more released are the energies of its final units. For 
the sake of simplifying explanation in the foregoing, 
we have supposed the exchanges of motion and of 
primary force to take place along a right line ; but 
as a matter of fact, since each multiple atom is sur- 
rounded on all sides by other multiple atoms, the 
exchange of motion and energy would take place in, 
every direction. What we call magnetic effects con- 
cern more the entire mass of a body ; while electric 
effects are more manifested on their surfaces. The 
latter is generated by surface motion ; the former 
more by motion that affects the atoms of the mass. 
But the explanation of the cause of each is in no 
wise different. In magnetism, the motion being more 
diffused through the mass is more feeble ; but Fara- 
day obtained in magnetism, the magnetic (or elec- 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. 69 

trie) spark by simply intensifying the motion in the 
mass. Without intensity of motion superadded, 
magnetism is, relative to electricity, merely a static 
form of the same phenomena. They are mutually 
convertible, and both are produced by communicated 
motion. An electric effect may be brought about 
with far less motion than a magnetic effect. This is 
a natural consequence of its being more of a surface 
effect ; the energies of atoms there, being more sus- 
ceptible to communicated motion, and more respon- 
sive to it. 

Electrical phenomena may be defined as manifes- 
tations of inequality of distribution of primary force 
or energy, imposed on the surface of matter by the 
inequality of atomic motion. In the separated sur- 
faces of two masses, these manifestations are the 
differences of aggregate or resultant free energies 
disengaged by communicated motion. That of most 
energy would obviously be more intensified, and un- 
der a higher tension than the other, and would be 
plus, or positive, to the other ; but it must be borne 
in mind that this expresses mere degree of force and 
nothing more. If these surfaces were placed in con- 
tact, the excess of motion of one would pass to the 
other ; and with it, from multiple atom to multiple 
atom, successively, would come the equilibration of 
force, in the same manner as has been explained for 
the line of atoms #, 5, c, d, etc. Of course to our 
senses, this motion would pass as one flash, or spark ; 
— and doubtless to this impression given, is largely 
due the idea of an " imponderable fluid " passing. 
We cannot realize vibrations of multiple atoms of 



JO MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT, 

matter, so rapid that twenty-three millions of them 
occur in a single second, as in the production of some 
colors ; and yet the vibrations of the final units of 
each atom must be far more rapid than this. The 
degree of expansion required of multiple atoms in 
order to produce the most ordinary electrical mani- 
festations, is incomparably small : — and by a very 
little frictional excitation, small light bodies take up 
movements of attraction or retrocession. For ex- 
ample in the decomposition of a single grain of 
water, or the separation from union of its oxygen 
and hydrogen, the energy overcome is equivalent to 
that manifested in eight hundred thousand electric 
discharges, each of which is represented *by the 
electricity furnished in thirty turns, of a powerful 
plate electric machine. If a part of the surface of a 
homogeneous body, — or one whose multiple atoms are 
alike, as in elemental matter, — be frictionally excited, 
there is heat generated, (or the multiple atoms swing 
in greater arcs, but since the atoms are alike, this 
heat motion is rapidly diffused through the mass. 

There is doubtless a small electrical effect, but it 
is wholly masked by the far greater heat motion. In 
heterogeneous bodies, the multiple atoms, or mole- 
cules, are unlike, and if heat motion be communi- 
cated by friction, it is with far greater difficulty 
diffused or transferred, and the multiple atoms, com- 
pelled to take up, in some way, the motion received, 
must do so partially, at least, by expansion. Here in 
each atom expanded, and having more motion of its 
units, there is a corresponding disengagement of 
primary energy, and the general character of the 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. 71 

phenomena is electricity. As a familiar illustration, 
one with dry shoes may slide on a carpet, then 
touching a finger to the stove, there follows the 
electric spark ; or, if to the open gas jet, the gas 
will ignite. It is therefore not only motion trans- 
ferred to the gas, but motion of a character so in- 
tense, as to set the multiple atoms of the gas (so 
highly susceptible to motion) into heat vibration. 
Yet the motion, transferred to the gas jet, is not 
heat motion, for it has not the effect of heat to sen- 
sibility : — and yet the original frictional motion be- 
tween the feet and the carpet did generate a great 
deal of heat. As stated in the subject of heat, it is 
an oscillatory vibration of multiple atoms, which 
expands the volume of the mass. But in neither 
electrical, nor in magnetic effects, is the volume of 
matter enlarged. A bar of iron may be magnetized 
by hammering, — this creates friction among its mul- 
tiple atoms, and some heat ; but if there was no 
other kind of motion, except heat motion, there 
would be no other effect manifested. 

What then is the probable nature of the motion 
producing electrical and magnetic effects ? It is obvi- 
ous, that though there is motion, it is something 
besides the oscillatory motion of atoms in heat ; and 
it is further obvious, that this motion is connected 
with a development of a form of energy, different, 
in its manifestation, from heat energy. In elemental 
or homogeneous matter, where the molecules, or 
multiple atoms, are all alike, the only other kind of 
motion of the atoms that could be generated would 
be a motion of their composite or final units, giving 



72 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

expansion to the molecules, or multiple atoms, and 
this is manifested as either electricity or magnetism. 
In heterogeneous matter, where the associated mole- 
cules are unlike, and where heat motion is communi- 
cated, either by rubbing, or by shock of impact, or 
by radiant heat, this motion cannot (for mechanical 
reasons) be diffused as fast as received ; it must 
therefore, as stated above, result in the expansion 
of the molecules, or multiple atoms, and. in the mani- 
festation of electrical or magnetic effects. 

Electricity as a dynamic effect, cannot be trans- 
ferred or communicated, without a material medium 
of contact, any more than any other form of motion. 
" Experiment has shown, that a certain portion of 
matter, though it may be attenuated to an extent 
beyond the limits of calculation, is necessary for the 
transmission of the electrical discharge." " Induc- 
tion, too, must take place through material atoms so 
near each other as to be within the reach of each 
other's attraction." "The theory of Faraday," 
remarks De la Rive, " rests on a sound principle, 
that electric actions take place through the inter- 
vention of material particles ; and it tends to bring 
electric force into closer connection with other 
natural forces." And Grover says, " The gradual 
accumulation of discoveries is rapidly tending to a 
general dynamical theory, into which that of impon- 
derable fluids promises ultimately to merge." 

Enough has been said, to satisfy us that this whole 
subject depends simply upon the relations of motion 
and primary force. The common experiment of 
the pith ball being alternately attracted and repelled 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. 73 

by the prime conductor of an electrical machine is a 
repetition, on a graphic scale, of what has been de- 
scribed as taking place between the multiple atoms 
a, b, c, d, and e, the atom a having the greatest 
motion, and its communication successively to the 
others. The pith ball is attracted, because its re- 
sultant of free energy is less than that of the con- 
ductor ; there is contact, — tendency to equality of 
distribution of energy ; then repulsion to a position 
of equilibrium. 

This is followed by the ball parting with some of 
its motion (and some of its resultant free energy). 
It is then in the same condition as at first, and is 
therefore again attracted and repelled, and this may 
be indefinitely continued. All interchange of mo- 
tion, and of primary force, in matter, is in the direc- 
tion of most developed energy, toward matter of less 
developed energy ; and as the most developed energy 
of primary force, is where there is the most motion, 
it follows that the direction of interchange of mo- 
tion, and primary force, will always be the same. 

MAGNETIC MANIFESTATIONS AND THEIR EXPLANATION 
UNDER ONE PRIMARY FORCE. 

The current explanation of a magnet is, that " It 
consists of a collection of particles, each of which is 
magnetic, and endowed with both kinds of magnetism. 
In the unmagnetized condition of the mass, these 
forces are mutually combined, and exactly neutralize 
each other ; but when the mass becomes magnetized, 
the two forces are separated from each other, though 
without quitting the particle with which they were 



74 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT 

originally associated. All of the same kind are then 
disposed in one direction, and all of the opposite 
kind in the other direction." Surely there is nothing 
equivocal or doubtful about this language. And the 
logic of it plainly is, that in each final unit of matter 
are located three distinct inherent energies, to wit : 
two kinds of magnetic force, and the attractive force 
belonging to all matter ; for the assignment of these 
two forces to the particles is necessarily their assign- 
ment to the final units of matter of which the par- 
ticles are composed. 

If more is meant by two kind of forces, than 
forces different in intensity, direction of action, and 
quantity, it should have been expressed, for this is 
the limit of any ordinary conception of difference of 
forces. The explanation above quoted goes on to 
say : " Each particle thus acquires a polar condi- 
tion, and adds its inductive force to that of all 
others ; as a necessary consequence of such an ar- 
rangement, the opposite powers become accumulated 
at the opposite ends of the bar." In other words, 
at one end of a magnetized bar are accumulated 
attractive, and at the other end, repulsive forces. 
And yet strange to say, these two opposite energies 
attract each other ! Notwithstanding that, any in- 
herent energy must have sympathy with, and asso- 
ciation for, its own energy, more than for that of an 
opposite kind ; otherwise it would not only be self- 
dispersive, but the asserted opposite powers in each 
particle and mass would never combine to act, as 
they are asserted to act, — those of the same kind to- 
gether. If this be true then, that the same energies 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. 75 

must have the same sympathetic action, if at one 
extremity of a magnetized bar be accumulated the 
attractive forces, they should draw toward them the 
attractive forces at the end of a second magnetized 
bar. Instead of this, however, they draw the oppo- 
site or repellent end. This theory then of magnet- 
ism, of the mutual association in the same particle 
of these two distinct energies, together with a third 
attractive energy, is not only inconceivable, but is, in 
itself, contradictory. But if we assume, as we have 
done, that all matter has but one primary energy, 
than the basis of magnetic, as well as of electric 
phenomena is inequality of motion, expressing, as it 
always does, a necessary difference between the pri- 
mary force free to act ; either between two or more 
multiple atoms, or between parts of surfaces, or of 
masses. In magnetism, these differences of inten- 
sity are, as in electricity, styled polarity ; and for 
the sake of avoiding confusion this term will be con- 
tinued. Electric polarity may be excited in all sub- 
stances, as may magnetic polarity. All discovered 
properties of electrical and magnetic polarity indicate 
that they are merely degrees of the same form of 
development and induced by the same causes : viz., 
a vibratory motion, communicated as friction ; by 
hammering ; by alternately magnetizing and demag- 
netizing, as in the swift revolutions of a motor, which 
sends along a wire inconceivably rapid vibrations ; in 
each case the multiple atoms affected are expanded, 
liberating energy. Their action under such impulses 
has been already fully explained, and it is not desir- 
able to repeat it. In electrical manifestations, the 



j6 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

action is small, and naturally affects the surfaces 
most, since surfaces present the least resistance to 
motion ; even in ordinary magnetic manifestations, 
they are chiefly of the surface. Prolonged vibra- 
tory motion of great quantity, however, influences 
finally all the atoms of a mass, and the phenomena 
are then magnetic. Motion in either surfaces or 
masses, subjected to incident force, would from vari- 
ous causes meet with greater resistance in some parts 
of the surface or volume than in others. In hetero- 
geneous bodies there would manifestly be greater 
resistance to a surface motion in some parts than 
others, because of the different constituent elements ; 
the motion would with difficulty penetrate the in- 
terior at all, and would be far more intense at the 
surface and would therefore appear as electrical dif- 
ferences. The motion of one portion being more 
than the other, there would be in that portion rela- 
tively more free primary energy. 

This whole amount of energy would be a result- 
ant energy, and it would tend to act toward the 
lesser resultant energy of the portion of less mo- 
tion ; on the fundamental principle of the tendency 
to equality of distribution of free primary energy in 
the matter. These two resultants (to adopt present 
nomenclature,) may be designated as poles of en- 
ergy — a pole of plus, or more, and a pole of minus, 
or less energy. Precisely the same effects, and 
from similar causes, would be brought about in a 
mass of matter subjected to incident force — whether 
homogeneous or not — and there would be a plus and 
a minus resultant, or pole of energy. The earth 



PHYSICAL AFFECTIONS OF MATTER. J J 

itself is an illustration of this. In its daily revolu- 
tion, the incident forces of light and heat from the 
sun create a vast amount of motion in the part ex- 
posed. This motion is a motion of friction of parts, 
as well as of intense vibration of those parts. But 
owing to the great heterogeneity of elements, this 
amount of motion daily imposed cannot be readily 
transferred to other parts, and there results not only 
the oscillatory motion of multiple atoms of heat, 
but their motion of expansion, producing electricity. 
And, of course, with rotation there is an electrical cur- 
rent around the globe in planes perpendicular to the 
axis, thus making a magnet of the whole earth, with 
a resultant plus, and a minus pole of energy. Of 
course, these poles do not, and of necessity could 
not, coincide with the axis of gyration. 

Should large motor effects, in either electricity, 
or magnetism, ever be produced directly from heat, 
it will probably be through heat applied directly to 
either heterogenous masses or vapors. 1 Enough has 
perhaps been said to convince, that the hypothesis 
presenting an explanation of electricity and mag- 
netism under the assumption of one primary energy, 
definite and identical in character in all units, is at 
least rational. Electricity and magnetism are mu- 
tually convertible, and as each is a mode of motion 
of matter each will produce heat motion, and each 

1 Through such a volume there must extend minutely ramified 
metallic conductors leading to one main stem : — just as in the hetero- 
geneous animal body, heat from food is partly converted into magnetic 
and electrical effects, which are collected in the nerve channels, and 
in the brain. 



78 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

may be produced by heat ; and any kind of motion 
producing the one will produce the other. The 
action of each along a line of multiple atoms, or 
molecules, is the same. That is, a motion of expan- 
sion conveyed to the first atom ; this expansion 
freeing a certain amount of primary energy ; the 
atom intensely attracting its next neighbor in 
consequence of that energy, and imparting its 
own motion ; and it, in turn, repeating the process, 
and the same along the line of atoms ; the last 
atom attracting and discharging its motion upon 
any contiguous substance. If instead of one line, 
we suppose a vast number of lines of atoms, as in a 
conducting wire, there would be a wave of motion 
and of energy, from a disturbing centre of motion 
along the wire ; the wave passing successively 
through the multiple atoms, and at the terminus 
attracting other matter and discharging itself, it 
may be, with a great shock. The immense amount 
of energy displaced in the development of these 
two forms of force, electricity and magnetism, arises 
from the release, along their path, of great stores of 
primary force, which has all the effect of a wave of 
imponderable fluid, though in fact a wave of motion 
and of force. 



CHAPTER V. 

CHEMICAL ENERGY AND THE PHYSICAL PHE- 
NOMENA OF VITAL FORCE. 

Chemical action a Differential Attraction — No Differences of In- 
herent Forces of Elements — Apparent Differences Accounted 
for — Current Electricity — Chemical Action Releases Energy — 
Vital Force not Possible except under Conditions of great Fletero- 
geneity of Matter — Its Characteristic Phenomena — Chemical 
Action Renders it Possible — Opposite Action of Life, Energy, 
and Chemical Energy — Theological Conceptions — What we 
Witness in Life Force — Channels of its Energy — Its Nature. 

IT is the province of chemistry to deal with the 
forces and motions of the molecules, or multi- 
ple atoms, acting between different forms of 
elementary matter ; — or matter having different 
physical properties. Our design here is very brief, 
and limited to explaining for chemical phenomena, 
the principle of one inbeing energy in the final units 
of all matter, and its probable mode of action in 
chemical forms of force. 

From observation that molecules of different ele- 
ments exercise a variable attraction toward mole- 
cules of other elements, has been derived the term 
"affinity," signifying an elective tendency analogous 
to the likes and dislikes of sentient beings. This 

79 



80 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

conception has greatly fortified the imagination, by 
investing each elementary form of matter with some- 
thing more than mere difference of force, and it sug- 
gests a hypothesis utterly unthinkable when applied 
to the only properties of force known. Even assum- 
ing, for the sake of argument, that the final units of 
each elementary substance are endowed with some 
form of property, or energy, unknown to all the 
others, — and other than intensity and direction of 
action, — such as is embraced in the words " elective 
affinity," we must still deal with a fixed character in 
each final unit of substance, whatever that character 
may be. And having done this, that it should then 
be asserted that the same unit is invested with a 
force, which can exert itself alternately to repel, and 
then to attract, or vice versa, is inconceivable. 

We are bound to exclude admissions of the joint 
occupancy of the same unit of matter, by two or 
more distinct energies, with first one, and then the 
other dominant ; and we must conclude that the 
variable action of molecules in chemical phenomena 
is a differential attraction, arising from some force at 
liberty to act, or prevented from action, by employ- 
ment in other efforts and directions, the same as in 
the case of any motor whatever. Chemical action, 
heat, and electro-magnetic currents are mutually con- 
vertible. Attraction between multiple atoms (mole- 
cules) of different elements will always take place, 
where the developed and unemployed primary force 
of those of one is greater than those of the other. 

The atoms of elements assimilate to the electrical 
and magnetic, positive and negative states already 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF CHEMICAL FORCE. 8 1 

explained, and present the same orders of phe- 
nomena. As has been elsewhere said, in the ratio 
that the final units of a multiple atom are separated, 
is its primary force free to act, being relieved to that 
degree from a concentrative exertion between the 
units. Since the final units of any two elements 
differ in magnitude, the normal atomic expansion of 
the multiple atoms of each is quite different ; and 
the relative amount of primary energy of the atoms, 
free to act outwardly, is different. Hence the mul- 
tiple atoms of one element may present a negative 
condition with respect to a positive condition of those 
of the other. If these atoms be brought within the 
range of each other's influence, (the two elements, 
of course, being disintegrated, or in a state of solu- 
tion,) the tendency to interchange of motion, and of 
union between them, is, other things equal, in the 
ratio of the difference of the free primary energies. 
If the atoms (free to move) of three or more ele- 
ments, be brought within each other's influence, the 
tendency to unite is strongest, other things equal, 
between those two whose atomic difference of free 
primary force is greatest ; though degrees of mo- 
tion, created by heat, may differ so widely as to 
determine a union in other directions. Since the 
free primary energy of a multiple atom is greater in 
the ratio of its expansion, atoms of large units will 
have relatively less free energy than those of small 
units. 

Therefore, other things equal, substances at the 
extremes of the scale of densities and specific 
gravity, should unite with rapidity. But here the 



82 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

mechanical difference of vibration of their multiple 
atoms may prevent union, as in the case of hy- 
drogen and the metals. Between other elements 
the chemical bond of union may be very slight, 
and a small agitation, as a limited heat motion, 
easily separates them. It will be remembered that 
in the interchange of motion, it always follows 
paths of least resistance ; and for that reason alone, 
as will be readily seen, the interchange between 
multiple atoms would be very far from always being 
the most active between those whose final units 
were of greatest, and those of least magnitude. We 
have spoken of chemical energy as one of differen- 
tial attraction ; — an attraction of different degrees of 
intensity between the atoms of different elements. 
TKe cause of attraction, manifested between atoms 
of certain elements, and of indifference between 
those of others, has been partially anticipated. Of 
the atoms of two elements, if their atomic, free prim- 
ary energies were nearly equal, no union would take 
place ; on the contrary, a mutual repulsion would be 
possible, if the atoms of both elements are from any 
cause much expanded, such condition of the atoms 
corresponding to an intense " positive " state; the 
repulsion being due to correspondence in amount of 
motion of the units of the atoms, and their equality 
in free energy. Likewise a form of repulsion due to 
excessive motion, might arise in the co-mingling of 
unlike atoms, unequal in their development of prim- 
ary energy. For the interchange in this case would 
be very energetic, — almost instantaneous ; and the 
whole effect of motion being generated almost si- 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF CHEMICAL FORCE, 83 

multaneously, the result would be a manifestation of 
great energy, even of explosion. Regarding multiple 
atoms of most free force as " positive," and those of 
least, as " negative," in all combinations, we have an 
explanation of chemical phenomena upon the sim- 
plest possible principle, similar in every respect to 
those of electrical and magnetic manifestations. 
The negative atom passively invites the interchange 
to the same degree that the positive atom solicits it, 
whenever the atoms are within each other's influence. 
Here are opposite states ; reciprocity of action, equal, 
and in opposite directions ; a union of the atoms ; 
and a mutual neutralization through interchange of 
motion. The union will be permanent in case the 
natural differences of magnitude of units, and of 
their motion and free energies permit. 

The transfer of the unit vibrations of atoms, and 
their interchange of motion and of primary energy, 
from atom to atom, comprehend the phenomena of 
current electricity, from chemical action. If we sup- 
pose a battery prepared, the interchange sets out 
from the more oxidizable metal, and it traverses the 
liquid toward that less oxidizable, which acts as a 
conducting plate, and from which may extend a con- 
ducting wire of indefinite length. The amount of 
energy is in the ratio of chemical action, the direc- 
tion of current, depending on the direction of chemi- 
cal action. Assuming now a single line of the similar 
atoms, one of them at the extremity of the line 
receives the interchange of motion of an atom dif- 
fering from it, and having relatively more motion 
and free energy ; this atom dashes against the ex- 



84 MATTER, FORCE, and SPIRIT, 

1 1< ni' atom, '.'it iii". up in' >i ion of its final units i" 
Inten hange, and developing its i»i imai y forci it, in 
ii . i hi ii, mi en hang< s In I he same mannei wil li H 
ni i ii< ighboi "I i he mat< i ial line, to wln< !i its n la 1 
i i'»n 111 the sense of motion and free primary force' 
is |... .ii Ive, Bach atom Impingi ■ hi like manni > 
upon i he nexl bui < 1 i ding atom i hroughoul i he li 
and .1 w.ivc of motion passes, accompanied by whal 
Is, in Ita final effei I , equivalent to .i wave oi fi 
primary energy, which upon arriving .ii the last atom 
«»i i Ik- line [g ready to inten hange fui i hei , oi to 
manifest Itself vigorously as •• powei ful .>i tract Ing 
agenti ( )bviously, in this primary, oi pioneer ws 
i he int( r( hange i an bi only pai I ial. it i-. probably 
instant ly su( 1 1 1 ided by ot hers, and I hi 
others, until the equilibration l>y lnt< r< han] om 

plete. Eai h atom afti i Inti ri hange wit l> t hi su< 

< i edlng at om, rep< Is ii , and Is itsell rep< lied, sim e 
bot 'i atoms are, wil h r< ipect to each ot hei , I hi n, 
"positive " in the relation of motion, and of equally 
developed pi Imary fori i 'I his ai I Ion would 

rise to a small reverse mum ni. 

In i he interi hange of mot ion and at tract lv< 

wc find the explanation oi the nascenl energy of 
mat ter, so prominent in i hi mi< al a< i ion , foi I he 
i ii* i gy of an atom Is propoi I ionatc to its free pi I 
in. ii y fori e, and i hat , of course, is gr< at « st when it 
is most liberati d, whii h Is by I hi i pansion oi I he 
atom i and I his i cpansion will be gn ati si whi n i he 
final units have i he most mol ion, and I his Is imm< 
diately afti i mot ion is i hi usl upon t hem \>y « hemi 

< al a< i ion. ( hemisl ry rev< als to us I hi vasl amount 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF VITAL FORCE. 85 

of primary force that is bound up in the union 
of atoms into a mass, the same as that required 
to rend them asunder. For example, the amount of 
heat motion required to raise one pound of water 
one degree in temperature, would, if mechanically 
applied, raise seven hundred and seventy pounds 
one foot high. The fusing point of iron is little less 
than three thousand degrees Fahrenheit. How vast 
then is the mechanical equivalent of heat motion 
necessary to melt one pound of iron ! 

These forces bound up in matter are, to our senses, 
latent, and are employed in holding substance rigidly 
together. The separation of substance into its mul- 
tiple atoms, by imparting to them more than normal 
motion, is the release of a vast energy ; and the ex- 
pansion of those atoms, by conferring a greater motion 
upon their final units, releases another amount of 
energy equal to the force consumed in giving to their 
units a greater motion of expansion. 

THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF VITAL FORCE. 

It is not our determination to enter upon the 
problem of organic phenomena, further than to 
arrive at their general relation to other modes of 
motion, and their manifestation of primary force. 
Here, as in other forms of physical energy, we con- 
cede to matter but one inbeing energy ; and that the 
final units of substance differ, in each element, only 
in magnitude. 

Chemical action is the first departure to hetero- 
geneity from homogeneous elements ; these ele- 
ments, it will be remembered, being mechanically 



86 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT, 

seggregated in the cooling of universally diffused mat- 
ter. From chemical action to those modes of motion 
of matter, and manner of. development of primary 
energy, which are favorable to the action of vital 
force, matter attains conditions of heterogeneity to 
an extreme degree. Highly complex molecules, 
compounded of atoms of many different elements 
derived, it may be, from double, triple, quadruple, 
and higher degrees of chemical union, in breaking 
up present us with our first ideas of the immensity 
of the energy in matter. 

The physical phenomena of vital force are the 
incessant dissolutions and recombinations of highly 
complex unions ; primary force being here perpet- 
ually released, made continuous in flow, and econo- 
mized ; as in a magnetic machine, a continual effect 
comes of magnetizing and demagnetizing. The way 
for organic life is prepared by chemical action in 
creating the great heterogeneity of matter and in 
the resulting rapidity of its interchange of energy. 
And conversely, no life will be initiated in matter, 
until these conditions are brought about. Without 
these immeasurably swift transformations life con- 
ditions are unfavorable, and in life manifestations, in 
the ratio that they are retarded, will organic activity 
stagnate. 

The free action of primary force, is the physical 
characteristic of life force. Chemical action is as- 
sisted by heat and light motion, and by electric and 
magnetic motion ; together they heterogenize mat- 
ter, pulverize and inter-diffuse it. They prepare the 
way for the latent life principle, which, like the life 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF VITAL FORCE. 87 

of the seed, is dormant, and remains so until condi- 
tions allow it to act. When it does act, the province 
of these motions is to tear down, as life force builds 
up. There are a few, even of those who accept uni- 
versal law as the method of the universe, who are 
ready to concede that vital activity is a resultant, 
derived from the other physical affections of matter. 
The direct creation of organic forms, to most minds, 
and to others, their modification by surrounding 
conditions, is a satisfactory solution of the question 
as to the manner in which organic life has appeared ; 
vital energy being presumed to be a quality of force, 
especially conferred for an occasion. Other thinkers, 
accustomed to dealing wfth experiment and laws, 
are divided between the germ theory, and that of 
the spontaneity of life under conditions of law. 
Commonplace theological questions, perpetually re- 
curring, hold in many minds the prominent place, 
to which everything else is subordinate, as though 
the dignity and sublimity of the Infinite Being were 
at stake. Discarding the element, time, the contro- 
versy is resolvable into two questions ; one of law, 
absolutely unchangeable, through the persistent 
operation of which, organic life is a possible devel- 
opment from the nature of force and matter as they 
now exist. In other words, that as they are fash- 
ioned, they are quantities and completeness, in them- 
selves, sufficient to accomplish all the possibilities of 
Nature. The other question is one of modifications 
imposed from time to time upon processes of matter, 
by Divine interference. 

Under either view there is nothing inconsistent 



88 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

with the recognition of co-eternal, absolute Intelli- 
gence ; and the theological difficulty arises, when 
each class of advocates attempts to adapt the other's 
scientific doctrine to his own theology. It will 
hardly be contended, even by the most zealous 
advocate of vital force as an independent energy, 
that it is one non-resident in matter ; or that its 
being is possible unless so located. Not only is 
this inconceivable, but if such existence were pos- 
sible, it would most times be purposeless. If it be 
a located property of matter, it is possible to all 
matter ; for all, or nearly all, known elements may 
be assimilated in the organic economy, as useful 
factors. The only remaifiing inquiry relates to the 
time of the endowment of matter, with this supposed 
distinct energy. Is it a quality conferred upon mat- 
ter, in the ratio of the demands of the organism, as 
indicated by its growth? If so, here is at once and 
forever an end to all law and prevision, for there 
could be no more complete assertion of interposition, 
and no more sweeping denial of the truths of every- 
day observation. Lastly, then, is vital force intro- 
duced for the first time, when geological conditions 
are favorable to the development of organic life, as 
organic germs ? This idea is one involving increase 
of primordial forces, and of special changes in them, 
as radical as, though more infrequent than the last 
supposition, and it upsets the operation of law, 
since the energies of matter are, to our understand- 
ing, fixed, and whatever they are, that they remain ; 
at least until all matter under existing provisions of 
force and motion is again diffused into its final units: 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF VITAL FORCE. 89 

or until it stifles all possibility of life in sidereal con- 
centrations, immeasurably vast and solidified. (See 
subject of matter.) If the foregoing conclusions be 
correct, the alternative is, that all forms of force are 
derived from pre-existing form and quality ; and all 
forms of matter, whether organic or not, are poten- 
tial somewhere in the nature of its own energies. 
Under this view, the processes of the organization 
of matter, and advancing progression of life forms 
under Omnipotent supervision, are no more incon- 
sistent with law, than are His co-existing intelli- 
gence, and sympathy with all His laws and processes 
of law elsewhere in the universe. Conceding, then, 
that the inherent force of matter is immutable, what 
do we view in the development of organic structure, 
and also in the vitality of that structure ? Is it a 
distinct energy until then impassive ? If so, we 
must concede to matter the association of another 
kind of force to be added to the motley multiformity 
of forces, which prevailing doctrine has conferred 
upon it. There is then no alternative, but to admit 
that potential life force is a quality existing primor- 
dially in the very nature of primary force itself ; and 
as much a part of its character, as is its disposition to 
attract other force from which it is separated, in the 
separation of units and of masses. If this be the 
case, then in organic forms, what we witness is a 
manifestation of the life quality of the innate pri- 
mary energy of matter, joined to the physical affec- 
tions of light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and 
chemical action, which are the same physical and 
mechanical modes of energy, persisting in operation, 



90 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

and in the same manner, as we have seen their opera- 
tion in inorganic substance. So that all that is re- 
quired is structure, capable of receiving, directing, 
and converting these forces into aids, in the assimi- 
lation of extraneous matter. The definite develop- 
ment of the structure is initiated and carried forward 
by life force. 

Of course, the most sanguine could hardly ex- 
pect, in organic forms, to trace these various physi- 
cal forces to their exact equivalents as vital results. 
Yet even in this direction something has been done 
to show that the progress of life form is greatly as- 
sisted by them. 

As before stated, chemical action aids in tearing 
down and removing life structure no longer wanted. 
Heat and light motion promote rapid interchange 
of force. 

" Liebig, by measuring the amount of chemical 
action in digestion and respiration, and comparing 
it with the labor performed, has to some extent es- 
tablished equivalent relations." " M. Helmholtz 
found that the chemical changes which take place 
in muscles, are greater when these are made to un- 
dergo contractions, than when in repose ; and that 
the consumption of the matter of the muscles, or 
in other terms, the excrementitious matter thrown 
off, is greater in the former than in the latter case." 
" M. Matteucci ascertained that the muscles of re- 
cently killed frogs absorb oxygen, and exhale car- 
bonic acid, and that when they perform mechanical 
work, the absorption is increased ; and he calculated 
the equivalents of the work so performed." 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF VITAL FORCE. 9 1 

Electric motion may, as is well known, largely as- 
sist in restoring suspended animation. And even 
where vitality has ceased, its interchanges and waves 
of force, along nerve channels, may produce to some 
degree the similitude of life motion. 

The cause of plant heat is to some extent chemi- 
cal, and of animal heat, nineteen twentieths are the 
same. No living body can originate power; it can 
only convert the stored force derived chiefly from 
food. The force of the animal organism is derived 
from the vegetable, and that in turn from the mineral, 
through chemical and other modes of reduction and 
interchange. 

In the exertion of every organ, force is consumed, 
and parts are wasted and dissolved ; and in every 
movement may be traced the operation of the laws 
applicable to any mechanical contrivance, definite 
degrees of change being connected with measurable 
consumption of force. Organic interchange is great- 
est in the direction of most motion, and like all other 
motion it follows paths of less resistance. And as 
the path of less resistance is that of less motion, or- 
ganic interchange is in the direction from points of 
motion to those of less motion. Mr. Herbert Spen- 
cer says : " In the case of organic growth, the line of 
movement is in strictness the resultant (line) of trac- 
tive and resistant forces. . . . The shapes of 
plants are manifestly modified by gravitation, and 
every flower and leaf is somewhat altered in the 
course of development by the weight of parts. 
. . . From a dynamic point of view, natural 
selection is the evolution of life along lines of least 



92 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

resistance. The multiplication of any kind of plant 
or animal, in localities favorable to it, is a growth, 
where the antagonistic forces are less than else- 
where. And the preservation of varieties that suc- 
ceed better than their allies, is the continuation of 
vital movement, in those directions, where obstacles 
to it are most eluded." 

The genius of Spencer first pointed out that 
rhythm is a characteristic of all motion. This mo- 
mentarily recurring fact, perpetually present to con- 
sciousness, had, until then, failed to receive the 
attention of consciousness. As the maintenance of 
one mental state would be unconsciousness, so the 
maintenance of organic energy in one direction, 
would induce stagnation of organic life in other di- 
rections. Incessant irritations, rhythmical or vibra- 
ting interchange, in all directions, make up the largest 
resultant in vitality. 

Rhythm of motion is the inevitable consequence 
of vibratory atomic and unit motion. And in these 
directions is the exercise of most primary energy* 
and therefore the greatest opportunity for life force. 
Parallels are everywhere complete between those 
energies making conditions favorable for the ap- 
pearance of life force, and those modes of motion 
styled the physical affections of matter. 

There are other channels of organic interchange 
of primary force and motion electrical in nature. 
Through the respiratory system are supplied nine- 
teen twentieths of animal heat. But we know that 
interruptions to the uniform transference of heat 
motion in a heterogeneous body produce electrical 



PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF VITAL FORCE. 93 

motion, and that if these interchanges are long con- 
tinued, they will establish for themselves paths of 
motion, in directions of least resistance. 

In the animal organism, therefore, heat motion is 
constantly transformed into electrical motion, and 
this motion has established itself in determinate 
paths. The nervous system offers in its character, 
structure, and by experiment, strong presumptive 
proofs that it embraces the chief channels of the 
conveyance of electrical modes of motion. It unites 
the whole animal system by rapidity of respondence 
into a unit of effort, and the ramifications of its 
channels, are, in all respects, co-extensive with the 
distribution of animal heat. 

In the torpedo, or electrical fish, electricity is 
most strongly developed where the nerves enter 
the electrical organ. It is a characteristic of matter 
in organic life, that it has increased freedom of mo- 
tions, and consequent intensity of action, by matter 
passing to states of heterogeneity from those of ho- 
mogeneity, the instability of the association being 
commensurate with the degree of heterogeneity. 
The close association of multiple atoms in masses 
locks up the primary force of matter ; but in the 
ratio that these atoms are free to move, do their 
energy and action become individual, their primary 
force free, and susceptible of becoming economized, 
and employed in determinate directions. 

Matter, through the operations of its physical 
affections or modes of motion, passes upward from 
the elemental to the compound stage, thence to the 
vegetable, then to the animal, in advancing hetero- 



94 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT, 

geneity. The aliment of vegetable life is inorganic, 
that of animal life, organic. And activity in each 
is in the ratio of the heterogeneity of the supply. 
From the simple cell structure of the first and hum- 
blest type of life, to the complicated organism of 
man, involves a vast stretch of time and of manifold 
change, but who, looking down this long vista of 
development, can doubt the might of the wonder- 
ful force conferred upon matter, and that they to- 
gether may accomplish the will of the Omnipotent 
through the gentle and patient operation of law. 
Surely the Infinite is not lowered by estimates of 
His methods through law, instead of personality. 
Immutability is an attribute of perfection, mutabil- 
ity, of imperfection. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EVIDENCE FROM THE WORLD OF MATTER AND 
FORCE OF UNVIERSAL SPIRIT. 

Nature's Methods those of Simplicity — Consensus of Opinion — 
Life Force and its Origin — Of the Laws of Attraction — Of the 
Conservation of Energy — Variety of Elements — Nature of 
Attractive Force — Likeness to Spirit Force — Presumptions of 
Materialism — Cognition, Self Consciousness, and Reason — 
Limits of Understanding — Habit, Instinct, Heredity — Sub- 
stance and Spirit — Life Force and Life Conditions — Advance- 
ment. 

IN our investigation of matter and force, we have 
endeavored to strip them of the occult and 
mysterious. Upon their analysis we have 
found substance, real, and of final units ; force dy- 
namic, represented by motion ; and force inbeing, 
represented in its aggregate form by the attractive 
power of matter. If science in its steady unheed- 
ing advance, with one effort, unpityingly drag away 
the supports of the miraculous, and sweep aside doc- 
trines of special agency, pointing in their stead to 
undeviating law ; with another effort, it as ruthlessly 
destroys the places of refuge of that bald material- 
ism which says, " We do not know all the powers of 
matter, its magical and spiritual nature, and its life 

95 



g6 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT, 

eternal," and which claims that an atom and motion 
explain all ; that the universe of life is their product ; 
and that " Laws are merely relations of things which 
exist of necessity." The examination of force and 
matter conveys at least the satisfaction, that by it 
we are in a better position to judge whether their 
physical forces are all sufficient, as physical forces, 
to produce life, self-consciousness, and reason ; or 
whether that inbeing force has a more subtle, inner 
nature, not involved in physical changes and phe- 
nomena, but without which life is impossible. We 
are not so inordinately conceited as to presume that 
the theory of one force, which we have presented, 
of the mode of production of the physical affections 
of matter is either the most correct, or the most 
probable. It is merely given as a possible method 
of their production. 

But whatever the method be, it is sure to be very 
simple, and as the form of motion of any one of 
these phenomena may assume that of any other ; 
and as the inbeing force of matter producing one, 
will produce the others, the oneness or unity of 
force may be fairly presumed. Each of these affec- 
tions of matter is a simple physical force, mechanical 
in its effect and operation, and its mode of motion 
is always the same ; it always has the same method 
of working and no other, like a machine, hence the 
united action of these physical affections would pro- 
duce a single machine-like effect and no other. The 
wonder grows that there should have been ascribed 
to matter and to the force represented by its motion, 
the power to produce life, consciousness, and reason, 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. g? 

Until a comparatively recent date, the forces of 
matter were enveloped in mystery, and supposed hid- 
den qualities contributed largely to the presumptions 
of ignorance as to its possibilities. As to the oneness 
of force and matter, we quote from several authors 
to show the consensus of opinion regarding it. " The 
existence of a single elementary force of substance, 
from which by differentiation, transformation, and 
the adjustment of proportions, all the varieties and 
properties of matter are produced, is an hypothesis, 
to which the whole drift of contemporary science is 
bringing us nearer with every fresh accession of 
knowledge." " The unity of physical forces is the 
point on which science has its eyes fixed. Already 
it has been demonstrated that heat, light, electricity, 
magnetism, chemical attraction, are exhibitions of one 
and the same power acting through matter. That 
all these forces may be transformed into motion 
and by motion be reproduced, is now something 
more than an hypothesis. Hence the deduction 
that all physical phenomena have one and the 
same primordial agent as their original generator." 
The Duke of Argyll says : " Science, in the modern 
doctrine of the conservation of energy, and the con- 
vertibility of forces, is already getting a firm hold of 
the idea, that all kinds of force are but forms of 
manifestation of one central force issuing from some 
one fountain head of power." 

" The reduction of all living forms to unity, that 
is, to the cell, is an indication that the vital agent 
is itself a form of the one primitive force, and thus 
physiology tends to unity by way of morphology. 



98 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT 

And this reduction of organs to unity, is true for 
plants as well as for animals." The materialist deny- 
ing all spiritual cause, is now compelled to account 
for the production of life, consciousness, and thought, 
by the modes of motion, or the physical manifesta- 
tions of matter, for which, in neither observation nor 
experiment is there a scintilla of evidence. Neither 
of these forces, separately, has the nature of life 
force, and there is no reason to suppose that their 
united action can bring forth qualities and character 
not contained in the components. 

Life force has never been evolved in the labora- 
tory, notwithstanding the most studious and persist- 
ent efforts. Not even the faintest sign of structure 
has appeared ; much less the power that dominates 
* structure presenting itself as life force. Denying 
God, the materialist declares that life proceeds from 
matter and motion. He proves neither that this is 
possible, nor that there is no God. We believe in 
the advantages of science to humanity, and from 
every source we welcome its truths. And we be- 
believe that these truths lead, as they have always 
steadily led, to the most rational and exalted, and, 
the most fundamental conceptions of an Infinite all- 
wise-Being. 

Regarding, then, the assumption as unwarranted, 
that the physical manifestations of force are suffi- 
cient in themselves either to originate or to maintain 
life, we turn to examine some of the evidence that 
there exists a supervising Intelligence, a Spiritual 
Power, through whom the inbeing force of matter 
derives its life-giving or spiritual quality. It goes 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 99 

unchallenged that the characteristic law of the inbeing 
force of matter is that it varies in intensity of effort 
directly as the mass, and inversely as the square of 
the distance. If we assume that there is neither 
Universal Spirit nor intelligent control in the uni- 
verse ; that nothing exists but force and matter ; 
then it is self-evident, that whatever the mode 
of action of the inbeing force of matter is now, 
that it has been, in all past eternity of dura- 
tion, and that it will be for an eternity to come. 
It is, therefore, not strange that from this stand- 
point matter and force should be undeviating in 
their operation ; in fact have methods of undevia- 
ting law of action. But what is extraordinary and 
inexplicable is, why that law of attractive power 
should be the precise law of variation of the force 
that it is. For it is susceptible of mathematical 
demonstration, that the limits of possible variation of 
the intensity of attractive force of matter, consistent 
with orbital motion and the preservation of general 
harmony in the movements of heavenly bodies, are 
exceedingly narrow. Variations of this force accord- 
ing to any direct law of the distance, would bring 
about swift confusion and self-destruction ; while if 
the attraction varied inversely as the cube, or any 
other functions of the distance, all orbital motion 
would be annihilated and impossible. 

Therefore, had the law of the variation of the 
force of gravitation, as now existing in matter, been 
some one of millions of laws of variation, as it might 
have been, planet and world and sun formations 
would never have taken place and their matter would 



IOO MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

still have been a part of the inextricable confusion 
of chaos. We find, then, that our planetary system 
with its elemental and its heterogeneous matter, and 
the physical affections of that matter; its organic 
life forms, and all the beauty and the variety of our 
world, could not have been brought about, except for 
this particular law of variation of the attractive force 
of matter. If then, matter from all eternity so far 
as we can understand be invested with one of the 
very few laws of force out of millions, that would 
have accomplished the present world results ; and if 
that matter constituted in this wonderful way so 
that its effects have culminated in appearances of 
the highest wisdom, enabling it to bring forth life, 
and thought power of men, why then, this is proof 
presumptive of the intelligent exertion of that matter. 
And it is, in fact, not only cause, but intelligent 
cause. A distinguished author says : " In tracing 
upward a chain of causes, if we stop at any cause, or 
force, or principle, that force or principle becomes 
for us God, since it is an efficient agent controlling 
the universe/' 

Considered by the mathematical doctrine of, 
chances, there are millions of chances against so 
few, that they can be enumerated on the fingers of 
one hand, that a law of the force investing matter 
should be the precise law that would render planets 
possible. Is it possible, that matter is by chance 
so self-constituted ? Is it not more probable that an 
Infinite Wisdom, above conditions and prescience, 
has selected the law which conditions matter ? 

Again, as has been said in the chapter upon mat- 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 101 

ter, there is no principle of science more immovably 
founded, than that of the conservation of the dyna- 
mic, or motion energy of matter. Though appar- 
ently ceasing, it persists from form to form of motion, 
absolutely indestructible. It has also there been 
demonstrated, that matter acting under its law of 
attraction, and this principle of the conservation of 
energy, will sooner or later, though at some period 
immensely remote, ultimately arrive at a stage of 
stagnation, from which it has no power of self-resus- 
citation ; — and that this is inevitable under any as- 
sumption whatever, as to the limits of matter in the 
universe. As has been shown, this final period of 
matter will be one of its consolidation, and of abso- 
lute darkness, or of its universal diffusion, and it 
will involve the whole stellar universe. 

Now whatever has been possible under the opera- 
tion of the laws above indicated, in the tendency of 
matter to any final state, must have been already 
consummated during an eternal duration. There- 
fore, if the two laws of attraction, and of the con- 
servation of energy, which now control matter, are 
the same as those which have directed it in the re- 
mote past, all matter must, under their operation, 
have arrived, in some past period, at absolute equili- 
bration of motion, and stagnation, in the form of 
either universal diffusion or consolidation. The 
forces of matter which brought about these condi- 
tions would inevitably and forever perpetuate them. 
And had there not been an intervention of some 
Absolute Power above and outside of matter and 
its inbeing attractive force, matter would now have 



102 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

been in one of the two states indicated, of universal 
rest ; — since matter could not, of itself, have changed 
its laws of action or its inbeing force. There is then, 
upon any assumption, a period of progression, of 
culmination, of decay and practical death of the uni- 
versal material world ; and it can be re-animated to a 
renewed progressive life, only through an influence 
and Power beyond law and above it, and for which 
law is insufficient. Nothing in fact but Spirit, Uni- 
versal and Absolute, can under the great laws of the 
universe perpetuate the universe ; and in the help- 
lessness of its old age restore it anew to a life-pre- 
paring, and life-producing condition. 

It may have been that from one to another of these 
vast and supreme cycles of matter of the past, Di- 
vine Intelligence imposed upon matter other laws 
and conditions of force than those now governing. 
He may have willed variety in the supreme universal 
method, like the variety upon our little earth and 
planetary system in the elementary forms of matter, 
and in the organic forms of life. He may have willed 
that force and matter should proceed so far, and then 
change, to conform to other ends that He chose to 
bring about. 

An Unconditioned Power is not conditioned even 
unto itself; otherwise He is Intelligence, forever in 
self-imposed bounds, and eternal non-interference 
with His own laws ; — and wills not. But God wills, 
and unconditioned as He is, His method may be 
methods of change, as well as methods of law in 
each change. 

It has been shown that conditions favorable to life 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 103 

force, are those of greatly increased freedom of the 
motion of matter in its minute forms, and of increased 
frequency of interchange of motion and energy. 
These conditions give life tendencies their opportu- 
nity. But they would not be possible without hete- 
rogeneity of matter, or diversity in its elements. In 
other words, if there were but a single elementary 
substance, and if matter were all iron, or all sulphur, 
or all oxygen, there could be no life ; — as then, the 
conditions favorable for the operation of the life 
property of the inbeing energy of matter could 
never be brought about. How came it that this 
variety of elementary substance exists? If there 
were intelligent purposes to be carried out, this was 
necessary. If there were no purposes, then it was 
all accident, mere happening. Is it probable that 
this variety is a self-assumed prevision of matter ? 
Or is it more probable that it is a forecast of wisdom 
from intelligent source ? Again : Whoever declares 
that matter and its physical forces, are in themselves 
all sufficient for all effects that are evident to cogni- 
tion, must account for the production of life. And 
if he deny that matter has but one inbeing force, 
and assert that the qualities of each elementary form 
of matter are due to peculiar forces singular to that 
element alone, it is pertinent to inquire, whence came 
all this wonderful variety of energies, of which, as 
we have shown, there is no possible conception nor 
explanation in the whole domain of physical science. 
There are about eighty distinct substances, and of 
course, if each substance be favored with a set of 
occult energies and properties, peculiar to itself, it 



104 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

becomes those who advocate this idea, to disclose 
the source of these extraordinary qualities. If mat- 
ter has empowered itself, then matter must be wiser 
than its inertness signifies, — and above necessity. 
For necessity means simplicity, uniformity, same- 
ness. Necessity is universality. What is necessary 
to matter anywhere, is necessary to matter every- 
where. 

We now pass to the consideration of the character 
of the attractive force of matter which draws together 
its units as well as its masses. As is well known this 
attraction is a power reaching through vast intervals 
of space between masses, as well as through those 
inconceivably small intervals between final units ; 
and in all cases it acts independently of a medium 
of transfer. It is pure force, extending to, and 
drawing to itself other pure force, located in other 
matter separated from it by an absolute void. Yet 
through this absolute void extends this wonderful 
energy, a pure force existing without matter ! Is 
not this our idea of spirit power? A pure force 
without matter ? Only we concede to spirit power, 
intelligence. Whatever theories one may entertain 
about matter as a reality, we presume it is undeni- 
able, to all, that there exists in all matter, within the 
limits of our visual universe, an inbeing force of at- 
traction ; and that this force is exerted through the 
voids of space and is independent in its action of any 
medium. How came substance to be associated with 
such a quality, or energy, wholly unsubstantial and im- 
material ? The two, the substance, and its indwell- 
ing energy, are utterly without likeness or simili- 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 105 

tude. One is the burden, the other the carrier. Is 
it from necessity, or from chance ? Is it a self-as- 
sumption by matter or by force ? Or is it an asso- 
ciation originating in the wisdom of Omnipotence ? 
Which is the most probable? If from this associa- 
tion come, ultimately, organic life, volition, self-con- 
sciousness, cognition, thought, reason, does it proceed 
from the inert, helpless dead burden, matter, or does 
it come from this wonderful innate power directing 
matter — a power which has the veri-similitude of 
spirit ? Who has not witnessed the ordinary phe- 
nomena of transference of thought ? Two persons 
thinking the same thought in almost the same form 
at the same instant of time ; though each has no in- 
timation of and no means of knowing the other's 
thought, which may be utterly foreign to any pre- 
vious thoughts of either. Mind reading, mesmerism, 
and hypnotism, are familiar to all intelligent people. 
Here also, as in attractive action, are illustrations of 
immaterial energies of the will, — thought power, — 
passing through space, — absolute vacuo, from one 
mind to another, wholly independent of any medium 
of transference. Such transfers are not modes of 
material motion sent through continuous matter, 
but immaterial action. They are forces of thought 
conveying from one mind to another, simulations of 
the originating mind. This is spirit. 

Now the subtle power of attraction which draws 
matter to matter is not of course a power of intelli- 
gence, but it has in other respects in its action all 
the likeness of spirit, and in this likeness it is linked 
to our idea of spirit. And is it not more likely that 



106 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

it is a process extending from Universal Spirit, than 
that it is self-ordained in its character, and in its 
association with matter? If, as has been seen, all 
the mechanical modes of motion, manifested as the 
physical affections of matter, persist in organic bodies 
as the same mechanical modes of motion ; and if 
there, we find nothing changed in the nature of their 
action or character ; what is the energy that causes 
every unit of every substance to tend toward organic 
structure and then to organic life? Whence come 
the volition, and self-consciousness, and thought that 
follow? Surely not from inert matter or from its 
mechanical properties of mere motion ? 

And if we assert that there is but one inbeing force 
of matter, instead of the vast multiplicity of one 
'special force to each form of substance ; why then, 
we must likewise concede, that life force is some- 
thing more than merely attractive energy and mo- 
tion of matter. For no one will be so hardy as to 
affirm that life is a product of motion and attractive 
force only. There must be then, somewhere inher- 
ent in the character of this force, a life-producing 
power, or quality, capable of action, when the con- 
ditions of matter are favorable for that action, but 
until then masked and inert, — just as in the plant 
germ there is the capacity for life, but that capacity 
is never exerted until solicited by conditions favor- 
able. The first effect in the assembling of matter, 
is the preparation for life conditions through its 
various modes of motion or physical affections. As 
in assembling the parts of a machine, separately, 
they are unmeaning, but in place, they are proper 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 107 

parts of one form, and are seen to have functions. 
We do not hesitate to say, with Sir John Herschel, 
that " the force of gravitation is the direct or indi- 
rect result of a consciousness or a will existing some- 
where." 

From our point of view, it is a force from the 
Universal Spirit, delegated to matter and existing 
with it, under law imposed by the Spirit. Life force 
is the highest quality of the same energy. It also 
tends to attraction, to confluence, to unity, but more 
than that, it tends to organic form, to structure, and 
to life. In short, attractive energy, the investiture 
of matter, is an impulse of Divine Will. It partakes 
of the perfume of His Spirit, and its law is the ex- 
pression of His wisdom. The lower and more ma- 
terial forms of this energy are mechanical in their 
effect. The higher forms are manifested in the or- 
ganic, or life tendencies of all matter. Life, conscious- 
ness, and reason, proceed indirectly from Universal 
Spirit essence ; and life forms are in their develop- 
ment, partly a product from this same source. 

The fundamental conception of matter and force, 
outlined in this chapter, indicates, that unassisted 
and unsustained, they are as helpless to originate 
the universe of stellar splendor, as they are to de- 
velop a world of light and life ; and we see pressing 
upon us from every side, the improbabilities and 
impossibilities of other presumptions. 

Yet the materialist has robed matter and force 
with the garments of Omnipotence, and at the same 
time has denied to his counterfeit creation either 
purpose or intelligence. Admitting, as we must, 



108 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

that the self-existence of a Supreme Spirit is inex- 
plicable, how much more inexplicable is the self- 
existence of matter and force, self poised, the latter 
with its wonderful self-assumed law of action, and 
its power to bring forth life and intelligence, though 
possessing neither of those attributes ! The former 
with its self-acquired variety of elements. And the 
two together, wholly undirected, yet exercising and 
displaying all the wisdom of Absolute Mind ! Fools 
talk about the all-resolving power of reason, and 
declare, that they believe not, what they cannot 
understand. And as by no successive reinforcement 
of thought from cause to effect, can they go back 
to the beginning of God, they assert His existence 
to be incredible of belief. Let us glance at a few 
of the limits of understanding. Can these unbe- 
lievers comprehend a past eternity of time, or a 
future time unlimitable ; or a beginning, or the eter- 
nity of matter ? Can they understand life movement 
in the simplest form of the germ cell, or the growth 
of a blade of grass ? Or how they raise a hand, or 
move a foot? Can they tell what is the I, that 
cognizes impressions from the outer world through 
sensation ? Can they explain what it is that be- 
comes conscious in self-consciousness? Can they 
explain how it is, that the inbeing force of matter 
can stretch across vast world intervals of space, and 
attract the force of other matter? Can they under- 
stand the transfer of human sympathetic intelligence ? 
Can they even understand the initial motion of a 
body from a state of rest ; or the discontinuance of 
its motion ? In both cases, all intermediate changes 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. IOQ 

by increments must be passed through, and as they 
are infinite in number, infinite time would be re- 
quired. The vibrations of ether substance convey 
to us the light and heat motion of bodies so remote, 
that thousands of years are necessary for us to re- 
ceive it. Can they understand that if we pursue a 
right line in any direction we should never arrive at 
the boundary of a similar stellar universe ? 

How little is our knowledge ! How limited our 
comprehension ! We have only a narrow span of 
view, as from an island in the midst of space. 
Around us on every side is illimitable time, and 
extent, without boundary or shore : and beyond 
our outlook upon the stellar world and our own 
planet, we know nothing. Before one can justly 
assert that there is no God, he must have lived 
forever, have been everywhere, and have known 
everything. " One must first have become thor- 
oughly conversant with the entire universe. One 
must have searched through all the systems of suns 
and stars, as well as through the history of all ages ; 
he must have wandered through the whole realms 
of space and time, in order to be able to assert with 
sincerity that ' nowhere has a trace of God been 
found.' He must be acquainted with every force 
in the whole universe. He must be able to count 
up, with certainty, all the causes of existence. He 
must be in absolute possession of all the elements 
of truth, which form the whole body of the know- 
able anywhere. Else the one factor that he did not 
possess might be the very truth that would disclose 
God." In short, to be able to affirm authorita- 



IIO MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

tively that no God exists, a man must himself be 
omniscient and omnipresent ; that is, he himself must 
be equal to God. 

Suppose that upon some independent point in 
space, there stood the most capable of men, sur- 
rounded by matter in a condition of universal diffu- 
sion ; and that there were delegated to that mortal, 
supreme power to devise laws, to form worlds which 
should culminate in organic life and like man him- 
self. Let it be further supposed that he knew noth- 
ing of the existing laws of matter and force, but 
that his mission was to formulate them. Does 
any one for an instant presume, that in a time equal 
to the eternal past, the problem would have been 
solved ? And yet the materialist concedes to mat- 
ter far more than this ! 

Turn now to the phenomena of cognition, self- 
consciousness, and thought power, and assume that 
we are products of the forces of matter, with no pre- 
siding force to guide them. We find that the elemen- 
tary substances of the world, forming rocks, the air, 
water, and clods of the earth, etc., are declared to 
have become self-intelligent, since they are all em- 
bodied in the physical man. They solve scientific 
problems ; they calculate eclipses ; they reason ; they 
become moral, even religious ; they make love ; they 
conceive hatred. And the logical outcome of the 
argument of those who maintain that there is no orig- 
inal, higher quality in the universe than matter and 
its physical affections, or modes of motion, is, that 
each final unit of matter has independent intelli- 
gence, since matter cannot possess in aggregate form 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. Ill 

what is denied to its individual components. " What- 
ever is evolved from matter must first have been 
involved in it." Under this conclusion, the intelli- 
gence of man is the sum of the intelligence of the 
final units of which he is composed, and all of his 
mental powers are but the sum of the powers of 
those units. In other words, " the human body is 
maintained in its entirety and integrity by the intel- 
ligent persistence of its atoms. When their harmo- 
nious adjustment is destroyed the man dies, and the 
atoms seek other arrangements and relations." And, 
of course, what was the individuality is dissolved. 
The atheistic argument from which this quotation 
is made, does not pretend to account for the aston- 
ishing intelligence of the atoms. The presumption 
is, that they are self-existing. One God is denied 
and many are accepted. 

Of course, this theory of intelligence of final units 
is irrational in the extreme. And if parts of organic 
forms of life and intelligence cannot convey to the 
whole what they themselves do not possess, then we 
must accept the deduction that there is a spirit rela- 
tion in the inbeing force of matter, inherited from 
Universal Spirit during the eternal residence of mat- 
ter in the shadow of Divinity itself. 

Let us trace the course of cognition as authorita- 
tively outlined, and see if we divine any evidence 
of a spirit element. " Suppose that we have some 
sentient (organized substance) exposed to the im- 
pressions of the surrounding world. The sense im- 
pressions of these surroundings leave traces in the 
sentient organism ; these traces, or structures of dis- 



112 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

turbances of the organism, corresponding to the 
impressions, are preserved, and constitute a predis- 
position to revival upon a repetition of impressions 
of the same kind. The revival of the same feeling 
by the same traces, being again made in the sentient 
structure, recalls former impressions, because it is a 
mode of the same motion, again moving over the 
same path, and the organism more readily yields to 
that motion, or has less resistance than to a new or- 
der of motion. As often as this same mode of mo- 
tion is repeated, the traces upon the organism are 
repeated, and the new impressions find a readier and 
more convenient path for their movement. In each 
case there is a revival of former sensation of feeling. 
There is, then, a recognition by the organism, of the 
particular mode of motion produced by the impres- 
sions, and at the same time there is revived a recog- 
nition of it, as being the same as former modes of 
like motions, producing like impressions. This is 
the beginning of memory in an organism." This 
recognition of a sense impression, as being the same 
as a former sense impression, necessarily involves a 
recognition of something, by something. Surely 
recognition is not set up and created by the motion, 
for that is a mere motion of particles ; nor is it set 
up and created by any former trace of the same 
order of motion ; for that is a recognition of the mo- 
tion and of the trace. It is a sensation reproduced. 
And it might as well be said that the vibration of 
heat motion, and its resultant effect, are the same 
thing as memory or mind, as to say that the above 
described sense, or motion producing impression, 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 113 

originates memory of itself. A sense impression, 
and the final umpire which is cognizant of that sense 
impression, are two quite different things. What is 
this power that cognizes? That is of itself con- 
scious. Is it mere matter of the brain ? Highly 
organized gray matter, or matter to whatever de- 
gree organized, simply means matter highly respon- 
sive to motion. Is it then, that this matter, highly 
susceptible to motion, becomes conscious of a former 
motion, because it is now repeated in the same form ? 
This would be placing matter above any known 
properties of matter. Is this power of cognition, or 
memory, a power arising from the aggregation of or- 
ganic matter, and from the united action of all the 
physical forces or affections of matter ? If so, we are 
conferring consciousness upon physical forces. And 
we are conceding to an assembly of the final units 
of matter, powers which we deny to the units them- 
selves, for nothing can come from aggregates which 
do not exist in units. 

But cognition, recognition, memory, self-conscious- 
ness, are certainly truths. And if their powers are 
within the limits of the brain, then there is a some- 
thing there, higher than matter or motion, which 
notes their effects. This is power higher than any 
of the physical properties, or affections, since to none 
of them, no more than to the units of substance, do 
we concede self-consciousness, sentiency, or intelli- 
gence. The conclusion which we draw is, that the 
essence of cognition and consciousness is a spiritual 
quality of the inbeing force of all final units, which 
impels them to organization, and that with this or- 



114 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

ganization there comes a resultant spiritual power, 
a flowing together from all the unit components ; 
higher, stronger, and more potent, the higher matter 
is organized. It proceeds from universal Spirit, 
which has invested and clothed all matter with its 
forces. It is a power above all others, a spirit 
growth from spirit. And as it pervades the physi- 
cal contour of man and all organized forms, its spirit 
form is their form. For in its completeness it is a 
unit of spirit power, self-cognizing, self-poised, and 
a self-contained continuity. 

Again. What are hereditary transmissions ? Hab- 
its ? Instincts ? Let us admit the gemmule theory, 
of the bodily transmission by processes of reproduc- 
tion in animal life of minute organized structures 
which, as do all germs, determine the final structural 
form of the embryo, and the physical, and to a certain 
extent, the mental character of the integral animal. 

Let us also admit that habits, applied to animal 
life, are invariably respondent states of the organism 
to imposed external conditions. Habit, signifying 
a disposition of the organism to repeat, periodically ; 
particular manifestation of activity. The external 
conditions to which the organism is subject, are 
those of force and motion ; and habits, therefore, are 
modifications of organic motion, assisting to bring 
about in the organism, particular resultant motions 
or effects. But is this all in either hereditary traits, 
or in habit ? 

Under the supposition, that all there is in mental 
phenomena, is the product of matter and its physi- 
cal affections, can any one, or all of these united, of 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. 115 

themselves, originate particular peculiarities of mind, 
in any man or woman at particular ages, known as 
hereditary traits ? Admitting that structure repeats 
itself in progeny, it merely gives opportunity to the 
spirit qualities of the inbeing force of matter, which, 
acting through structure, follows the channels of 
structure. 

So in habit, a particular structural mode is imposed 
on the organism, as effects of particular orders of 
motion long repeated. Habit is most prominent as 
we descend the scale in the orders of animal life. 
There, organization is lower, spirit energy is less 
developed and less controls matter and its material 
forces. Following to its broadest conclusions, our 
evidence of a spiritual element in the inbeing force 
of every final unit, which induces and assists organi- 
zation and structure, and then presents itself as the 
life power of that structure, we must find in the low- 
est structure and life forms, the lowest spirit power, 
the most habit. Conversely, we find the greatest 
spirit element, and the least habit, the higher the 
organization. Here, the organic forces are diverted 
in particular directions, and are proportionally with- 
drawn from organic action in other directions. Gov- 
erning habits are therefore inconsistent with the 
versatility, variety, and multiplication of powers of a 
highly intellectual man or woman, of an elevated type 
of life ; and we should expect to find them predomi- 
nant in the lower orders, — the more characteristic- 
ally, the lower the type of the organism ; until where 
the animal immerges into the vegetable kingdom, its 
long, monotonous, rhythmical intervals of habit as- 



Il6 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

similate closely to the greater stability of vegetable 
life. 

If sufficiently prolonged, habit finds expression 
through inheritance as instinct, especially if its re- 
currence is dependent upon a degree of organic 
development, as, for example, of the organs of re- 
production, which to the bird or animal dictate home 
building. As the parent of instinct, we should expect 
to find instinctive life in the ascendency in the low 
orders of life, and an emancipation from it, according 
to the degree that higher orders were approached ; 
or that mentality should bear an inverse ratio to in- 
stinctive capacity. We should further expect to find 
hereditary traits to be those most closely allied to 
the propensities and passions ; unless the subject 
were of a high, intellectual type ; or of a highly or- 
ganized mentality, and consequent spirit power. In 
such cases the individual would be most likely to 
exhibit traits of an intellectual character, from simi- 
larly constituted progenitors. 

As organized matter is of a high or low degree, so 
is life or spirit power more or less refined and more 
or less developed. Organic life, both animate and 
inanimate, possesses, then, to different degrees the 
essential life or spirit force. 

Tyndall says : " Abandoning all disguise, the con- 
fession I feel bound to make before you is, that I 
prolong the vision backward, across the boundary or 
the experimental evidence, and discern in that mat- 
ter, which we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding 
our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto 
covered with opprobrium, the promise of all terres- 



E VIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT. I I 7 

trial life." Of course Tyndall means by matter, its 
activities, and not its inertness. 

The whole question is, does matter contain any 
qualities of force except physical qualities ? If sub- 
stance be inertness, it cannot produce what it has not. 
If its physical forces can bring forth life and intelli- 
gence, then they can produce what they have not, 
and from nothing can come something. There is no 
mind nor will power in substance, or its physical 
forces. Nor have they that spirit power which can 
impress through a void, — other spirit. Mind and 
self-consciousness are not an outcome from such 
sources. Substance has ever resided in the presence 
of spirit, and mental and spirit force are growths 
from the shadow of spirit, an inherent quality of its 
inbeing force. 

Chaseray says : " Let us distrust our imperfect 
senses. Let us not be precipitate in denying the 
quality of the human being, because the scalpel of 
the anatomist cannot reveal to our sight an emi- 
nently subtle principle. Man is not driven to anni- 
hilation even under the hypothesis of materiality." 
Cabanis, a great physiologist, admits that a principle 
or vivifying faculty is necessary to account for 
thought, and says that the contrary opinion cannot 
be substantiated. " Neither the primitive cell re- 
garded as an elementary form of life, nor any princi- 
ple known to science, suffices to explain life itself, 
or that power of action, which is in the living being 
at all the epochs of its existence, and consequently 
in the cell. In addition, therefore, to the material 
and sensible elements, there must be in it a principle 



Il8 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

inaccessible to observation, and it is this principle 
which is the agent of life ; the impelling cause of 
vital motion, and of all differentiations. Nature is 
an organism through which the Divine life is ever 
streaming, and imparting itself to all organic forms. 
Nature is subject to change, to the limitations of 
space and of time, and to consequent imperfection." 
Universal Spirit exists in matter under the self-im- 
posed conditions of law ; and were we, ourselves, not 
amenable to law but only the subjects, perpetually, 
of special agency, we would be irresponsible puppets 
without moral attainments, or merit accountability. 

Without Universal Spirit, nature appears a stu- 
pendous satire, grim and terrible in her sardonic 
irony. And in all her manifestations, merely a 
1 mother of freaks, bringing forth human kind as she 
would storms of the ocean, or the clouds of the air, 
to flutter awhile, and then pass away. Beings of 
mere physical enjoyment; without purpose; with- 
out aspiration. A universe of nonentities, with no 
useful result. Without Fatherhood and without 
sympathy. A happening, which may not happen 
again. A dissolving into everlasting nothingness, 
from which blind, terrible energies have brought 
them. If this be all, space would better have been 
empty extension ; or matter have remained at eter- 
nal rest. 

There is responsive action in the life force of struc- 
ture, to favorable change of environment, as well as to 
the enlarged action of the physical forces of matter. 

Purely physical action only makes conditions. 
And if spirit force be originally necessary to pro- 



EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL SPIRIT, 119 

duce life, more spirit force is equally necessary to 
produce a higher life. Hence, when conditions of 
the environment are advanced from stage to stage, 
the spirit element of force the more responds. In 
other words, there is an increase of spirit element 
with each higher manifestation of life, whether of 
plant or of animal. 

Structure, of itself, cannot tend to higher struc- 
ture ; or life, toward higher forms of life without 
outward preparation of physical forces, to which 
solicitation there is a response of spiritual element 
of force. Outward conditions are mere advantages 
of situation to the organism, and improved environ- 
ment improves the opportunity for the life or spirit 
force of matter. Plant life is always responsive. 
Animal life, — man, to his shame be it said, is not so. 
If the tenant be low, degraded, animal like, he will 
degrade the palace as well as the hovel. He will 
not advance with improved conditions by which he 
may be surrounded. The sum of all this is, that as 
spirit element of energy must be exerted, in order 
to produce structure, in conditions favorable to life, 
and with the beginnings of organic life ; so it must 
be more and more solicited, and more and more 
manifest, and more and more necessary in higher 
forms of that life. 



CHAPTER VII. 

EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT IN PSYCHICAL PHENOMENA. 

Thought Transference — Somnambulism, Hypnotism, Etc. — Commu- 
nity of Thought and Waves of Thought — Inter-connection of 
Mind — Spiritual Side of Inbeing Force — Individual Responsi- 
bility — Animal Sympathy — Corollaries of the Foregoing — Sum- 
mary as to Spirit Quality of Life Force. 

THE most astonishing thing in our existence is 
that we exist. Surrounded by the inanimate 
we are animated. Enveloped by the inert, 
unconscious and nonsentient, we are self-conscious. 
To have formed ourselves was impossible. And the 
inert presents to us neither power nor probability. 
Hence we look beyond it, as man has always looked, 
for a higher and an intelligent energy. 

There are certain subjective phenomena, that have 
done as much to impress civilized man with the idea 
that there is a difference between purely material 
force, and a spiritual nature in force, as grosser nat- 
ural phenomena have impressed him in a crude and 
savage state, that there is an overruling something 
beyond and above him. These relate to the inter- 
communication of mind without using the signs of 
language ; to the spontaneity of thought, which is 
often as much of a surprise to the brain of the in- 
dividual expressing it, as to those who listen, a sur- 

120 



EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT. 121 

prise indicated by deep emotion, as laughter, tears, 
love, or anger ; and lastly, to the phenomena of 
supersensual powers, exhibited in somnambulism, 
hypnotism, and mesmerism. 

The outward acts of the somnambulist are the 
external manifestations of an interior corresponding 
power, independent of the physical body. A prin- 
ciple of intelligence which directs the movements, 
and sees and acts independently of the organs of 
outward vision. A spiritual force, while the body 
is unconscious. Bacon defines it as " proceeding 
from the internal powers of the soul." Transfer- 
ence of thought is a commonplace occurrence, and 
presentation of evidence of it here would be both 
tedious and supererogatory. A striking feature of 
the proceedings at the annual meeting of the British 
Association in 1891, was the boldness with which Dr. 
Oliver Lodge, F. R. S., in his presidential address to 
his section, ventured the suggestion that it was the 
duty of science to investigate mysticism ; that its 
facts could no longer be ignored or denied. Careful 
experiments on thought transference and cognate 
matters had satisfied him, that a method of com- 
munication exists between mind and mind, irrespec- 
tive of the ordinary channels of consciousness, and 
the known organs of sense. He expressed himself 
as convinced that thought may be excited in the 
brain of another person, without a material medium 
of communication. He says, " The relation of life 
to energy is not understood. Life is not energy, 
and the death of an animal affects the amount of 
energy no whit ; yet a live animal exerts control 



122 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

over energy, while a dead one cannot." The mys- 
terious way in which important news flies from one 
part of India to another has long been an unex- 
plained matter of astonishment. It is an historical 
fact vouched for by unimpeachable evidence, that 
during the great Sepoy rebellion in the north of 
India, information of battles and their results would 
be known far to the south, hundreds of miles be- 
yond the English lines, and would be current among 
the natives long before the same information could 
be sent to English officials at these same points, by 
lines of rapidly travelling couriers. The natives had 
no visible means whatever of obtaining this informa- 
tion, and the inference accepted at the time, and 
now, is, that the method was solely by the transfer- 
ence of thought. It is well known that their learn- 
ing in mental mysteries is far more profound than 
ours. They have an advanced knowledge of tele- 
pathy or mind reading, such as we cannot understand 
or appreciate. And their knowledge and practice of 
what we call hypnotism, is greatly superior to our 
own. Many of their mental feats are wonders that 
cannot be explained, unless by the theory of some 
higher form of hypnotism, than that with which we 
are acquainted. 

As before observed, the time has passed when 
established psychic phenomena can be scorned as 
unworthy of attention, or pooh-poohed away as in- 
significant and unmeaning. On the assumption that 
such phenomena are from physical forces, they are 
outside of all of our knowledge of matter, as to ex- 
periment or experience. Explanations involve the 



EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT. 1 23 

acknowledgment of mind force, or thought trans- 
mission, or thought influence without language ; 
proceeding from an individual intelligence, and 
operating independently of any known medium ; 
frequently through very considerable intervals of 
space ; and acting outside of, and beyond the brain. 
Many great discoveries have been made indepen- 
dently and almost simultaneously. Among them are 
the forecast of a planet exterior to Uranus by Le- 
verier and Adams. The conservation of energy. 
The theory of heat, and of gases. The doctrine of 
natural selection. Spectrum analysis. The period- 
ical law of chemical elements. The discovery of 
ether. The invention and application of the cal- 
culus. There is no such entity as the " spirit of 
an age," except so far as applied to the advance- 
ment and tendencies of a people. All the great- 
est achievements of mind are beyond the powers 
of unaided individuals. It would seem that at 
periods, a great wave of sympathetic thought, either 
of a high or of a low order, swept over peoples, over 
communities and individuals, exciting to frenzy and 
madness, or to virtue and purity. Accord of thought 
brings unity in effort and direction, and when gath- 
ered and given impulse, it overwhelms individual 
wills. There are periods of great religious disturb- 
ances ; of great political changes ; of great scientific 
advancement ; of great military conflicts ; of great 
mechanical invention. This is sympathy of thought, a 
multitude of impulses uniting in one vast irresistible 
current. It is both concurrence and continuity of 
thought. 



124 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

" There are harmonious conditions of mind, famil- 
iar and well recognized as the result of identity of 
ideas. Each mind reflects the thought of the other. 
These are of daily observation. There is an imme- 
diate attraction of one mind for the thought of the 
other ; an energy imparted by one, and a yielding to 
this force by the other. This may be extended by 
silent thought to many. If a large concourse of 
individuals, as in a great and close city, are highly 
moved by one energy, the sway of thought is 
mighty. Men are swept off their feet ; are urged 
to action under an all-powerful impulse not recog- 
nized at the time." 

It is an irresistible, sympathetic connection of the 
people, although they may be intellectually incapable 
of attaining the idea by their private understand- 
ing, or even perhaps of consciously apprehending it," 
Of course mental constitution and condition must 
be in a responsive state for this effect. Under such 
circumstances and in such communities, there is rest- 
lessness, — an inexplicable condition of nervous ten- 
sion, and apprehension of a something to come ; — 
then there is realization and possible understand- 
ing. What is the explanation unless mind force is 
a real force, a power capable of producing its ef- 
fects through space, and independent of any ma- 
terial medium ? Mind is inter-connected with mind 
whether consciously or not ; with some minds far 
more sensitively than with others. One may, con- 
sequently, be affected independently of his own 
ideas, by virtue of this condition, even before the 
subject comprehends it. If this be so, and there be 



EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT. 12$ 

continuity of mind and inter-connection everywhere, 
we receive from every direction impulses of thought 
power, and mind impinges upon mind everywhere. 
We are inter-connected through heavenly spaces 
with spiritual thought, through earthly spaces with 
earthly thought, and there is even "Continuity be- 
tween man's mind and the Most High." 

It has been demonstrated in the most positive 
manner, that through short distances, one mind may 
impress another with its own thought, when both 
are in their normal condition, and bodily separated. 
Each mentality has its own peculiar mind energy, or 
mode of acting, and these are as numerous and as 
diversified as is the human face, or personality. It 
is a common occurrence that some sensitive persons 
recognize the presence, or the vicinage of other 
individuals, or of animals, in the most decided man- 
ner : — and evince such recognition, either by emo- 
tions of attraction, or of dread and repugnance, 
though such presence is wholly unknown to them 
through the senses. And it is an occurrence equally 
common, to have such recognition by the inner mind 
sense subsequently verified. 

Thus thought reaches out to thought through the 
antennae of mind force, extending as rays of light 
extend from a brilliant point in all directions. It is 
a spiritual and immaterial impulse, and yet by its 
action, it is a recognized energy. By it, the universe 
of thought is co-related and made one, through 
Universal Spirit. The more it is in harmony, and 
in accord in any community, the greater its effects. 
And the more spirit thought is in harmony with the 



124 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

" There are harmonious conditions of mind, famil- 
iar and well recognized as the result of identity of 
ideas. Each mind reflects the thought of the other. 
These are of daily observation. There is an imme- 
diate attraction of one mind for the thought of the 
other ; an energy imparted by one, and a yielding to 
this force by the other. This may be extended by 
silent thought to many. If a large concourse of 
individuals, as in a great and close city, are highly 
moved by one energy, the sway of thought is 
mighty. Men are swept off their feet ; are urged 
to action under an all-powerful impulse not recog- 
nized at the time." 

It is an irresistible, sympathetic connection of the 
people, although they may be intellectually incapable 
of attaining the idea by their private understand- 
ing, or even perhaps of consciously apprehending it," 
Of course mental constitution and condition must 
be in a responsive state for this effect. Under such 
circumstances and in such communities, there is rest- 
lessness, — an inexplicable condition of nervous ten- 
sion, and apprehension of a something to come ; — 
then there is realization and possible understand- 
ing. What is the explanation unless mind force is 
a real force, a power capable of producing its ef- 
fects through space, and independent of any ma- 
terial medium ? Mind is inter-connected with mind 
whether consciously or not ; with some minds far 
more sensitively than with others. One may, con- 
sequently, be affected independently of his own 
ideas, by virtue of this condition, even before the 
subject comprehends it. If this be so, and there be 



EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT. 12$ 

continuity of mind and inter-connection everywhere, 
we receive from every direction impulses of thought 
power, and mind impinges upon mind everywhere. 
We are inter-connected through heavenly spaces 
with spiritual thought, through earthly spaces with 
earthly thought, and there is even " Continuity be- 
tween man's mind and the Most High." 

It has been demonstrated in the most positive 
manner, that through short distances, one mind may 
impress another with its own thought, when both 
are in their normal condition, and bodily separated. 
Each mentality has its own peculiar mind energy, or 
mode of acting, and these are as numerous and as 
diversified as is the human face, or personality. It 
is a common occurrence that some sensitive persons 
recognize the presence, or the vicinage of other 
individuals, or of animals, in the most decided man- 
ner : — and evince such recognition, either by emo- 
tions of attraction, or of dread and repugnance, 
though such presence is wholly unknown to them 
through the senses. And it is an occurrence equally 
common, to have such recognition by the inner mind 
sense subsequently verified. 

Thus thought reaches out to thought through the 
antennae of mind force, extending as rays of light 
extend from a brilliant point in all directions. It is 
a spiritual and immaterial impulse, and yet by its 
action, it is a recognized energy. By it, the universe 
of thought is co-related and made one, through 
Universal Spirit. The more it is in harmony, and 
in accord in any community, the greater its effects. 
And the more spirit thought is in harmony with the 



126 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

Divine Spirit, the farther such thought may extend, 
for then, thought impulse is not antagonistic to uni- 
versal spirit, and is carried wavelike, in all its fresh- 
ness, perchance to some loved one gone before. 

Each individual is then a universe from whose 
centre thought proceeds ; and whose circumference 
of influence is inestimable, as the effects of his 
thought are never ending, but go onward and out- 
ward forever. 

As it is sympathetic, or the reverse, we invite or 
repel the thoughts of others. If we indulge in vi- 
cious reflections, we supply such influence to others. 
If we revel in images of sensuality, we invite kindred 
company, and group around us vile and degrad- 
ing emanations from other minds. Contrariwise, re- 
fined and exalted contemplation wins sympathy and 
strength from the pure, pervaded by like thought. 

If there be a spiritual, as well as a material side 
to the inbeing force of matter, the spiritual, being 
jointly a possibility, spirit-influence, as well as more 
obvious energies, must be allowed a place as a 
factor in all results which unite to make up or- 
ganic life. Tendencies of whatever nature, disposi- 
tion, excitability, ungovernable passions, emotions, 
even morals, and all psychological phenomena enter 
silently into all mental processes as results of in- 
heritance ; as do, also, instinct, intuition, indefinite 
apprehensions, and unconscious movements. It may 
be said, that functionally, diversity of arrangement 
of the final units of matter, in different brains, brings 
about different orders of resultants. This admitted, 
it is equally true that spirit, or life energies, have 



EVIDENCE OE SPIRIT. 12J 

had a large influence in effecting any given order of 
arrangement of these units, and therefore in produc- 
ing any resultant. Hence, while for some of the in- 
iniquitous tendencies of every mind the individual is 
largely responsible, for others he is not so much re- 
sponsible ; since, by no fault of his, a certain degree 
of bias to propensities or passion are his neither by 
choice nor by avoidance. And it may be, further, 
that bereft of every advantage by enforced poverty 
and misery, he has never been able to acquire the 
will power of self-control. How important, then, is 
education, and how great our responsibility toward 
the poor and the wretched ! 

We are now in a position to view, somewhat more 
intelligently, the lower animal sympathy of species 
and of kind. Let it first be observed, that every 
animated organized being possesses, in his individual 
aggregate, an order of motion and of action peculiar 
to his organism. The whole vitality is its expres- 
sion, and comprehends all the mental and physical 
processes. The persistence of this vitality perpetu- 
ates the identity of the organism. Sympathy is 
based upon identity, correspondence, or parallelism. 
It springs from those things which preserve identity. 
An animal as a whole, and one of a community 
of similar organisms, is simply a vitalized unit, hav- 
ing particular orders of motion, the same as an or- 
ganized molecule, an organic germ of a particular 
kind and magnitude. There is therefore a synchro- 
nism of motion and action in the vitalized units of a 
community of the same kind. This synchronism 
signifies unison, accord, harmony of association, con- 



128 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

sentaneousness in action and in tendencies. And of 
course it embraces all that there is in physical corres- 
pondence, as well as likeness in the spirit element. 

To a certain degree, any individual of the lower 
orders of animal life, as well as man, may impress 
the aggregate, making up its identity, upon fellow 
organisms. For in the aggregate primary force, and 
life force of an animal system, the imparting of 
energy, or modifying the energy of another similar 
aggregate, in other words the interchanging of en- 
ergy, may be compared to the similar interchange of 
energy and primary force between two molecules. 
The energy of each is impressed with the likeness 
of the energy of the other. Of course with the 
difference, that the interchange between organisms 
'involves the spirit or life quality. Animals of a par- 
ticular kind group together, or " Birds of a feather 
flock together," not because each recognizes in the 
other the counterpart of itself, in outward form and 
appearance, but because the spirit instinct of each is 
impressed by the sympathy of a similar spirit force 
or instinct in the other, and this element, together 
with that of similar tendencies and desires, maintain 
the association. 

Let us now examine some of the general corolla- 
ries involved in the foregoing statements. Life evo- 
lution has gone forward with earth periods, and has, 
from time to time, advanced or retrograded, depend- 
ing upon the solicitation of life forces by external 
conditions. The general direction, however, has al- 
ways been that toward higher and more perfected life 
forms, until at last we have arrived at man. Yet 



EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT. 1 29 

we have no reason to believe that the present man 
is the limit of perfection. The embryo of the man- 
child has inherited from organic forms less perfect 
in spiritual force ; and that in turn from still less 
perfect life, and so on down, until animal form 
emerges into plant form. It follows that if man 
has spirit life, all organisms have spirit life. As that 
spirit is a spark from the universal spirit, all spirit 
life persists, and no life perishes. Matter, by slow 
growth in the fertile womb of Nature, gropes surely 
and steadily toward organic form ; — a grouping of 
life energies. Then to higher, stronger groupings. 
Then at last to man. In each form is the spirit ele- 
ment. Spiritual power is then an inheritance. It 
may be, by cultivation, developed into great possi- 
bilities, or it may be dwarfed and smothered by ab- 
normal growths. " The mind is narrowed in a narrow 
sphere and the spirit grows to its allotted spaces." 
Spirit, then, has origin, growth or extension, and 
maturity, so far as the organism will admit. It takes 
its organization, limitation, and character, largely 
from the physical body, and the spiritual growth 
and development may be said to be a refined pro- 
duct of the organism, inasmuch as that is the centre 
of life and spirit. " Man may, therefore, be said to 
have two organisms, that which falls under the cog- 
nition of the senses, and that which is the invisible 
life spirit." 

Brain life is the organic seat of growth of spirit 
activity. In an inferior degree there are similar quali- 
ties in nerve life and its affluents, for life or spirit 
quality depends on degree of organization. From 
9 



I30 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

this flows the explanation of nerve habit ; nerve 
instruction, as in the fingers of the pianist ; reflex 
action ; insistence of nerve memory, as when nerve 
life, deprived of any usual functional exercise, or 
indulgence, sets up an irritating reminder, amount- 
ing to memory. Now, nerve diffusion is so multi- 
form and minute, that no point of the exterior or 
interior of the physical body is without nervous 
ramifications, and a needle point, placed anywhere, 
will pierce them. If, then, the physical body be 
stripped of tissue, blood, and bony skeleton, we 
would have left a sort of phantom duplicate of man. 
But this is the repository of the life, or spirit force. 
It is the spirit manikin, as well as the channels of 
life force. And if we could see mind contour, it 
would necessarily take this life form and appear- 
ance. 

The last summary of our proposition is, that the 
life, or spirit quality of the inbeing force of matter, 
is a diffusion of the universal spirit, which like the 
light of the sun is thrown everywhere. Matter is 
guided in its tendencies by this spirit tendency, to 
organic structure, and to the manifestation of life, 
sensation, self-consciousness, and intelligence. Spirit 
is everywhere, and the material atom must forever 
move in a spiritual atmosphere ; like particles of iron 
in a magnetic field, it is perpetually bathed in a dif- 
fusion of force of a particular kind. As matter as- 
sumes higher and higher organic life forms, spirit force 
is more manifest. Spirit tendencies and powers ac- 
quire more strength, and propensities and passion, 
not only in orders of life, but in individuals of any 



EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT. 131 

order, are more subordinated to that spirit strength. 
Spirit force enters into, and is a quality of life force, 
of ail organic forms. Spirit of a low organism is less 
than that of a higher; and in the ascending scale to 
man, spirit ascends. It is more and more developed 
and dominant, and has more independent power. 
Further : The grosser and more sensual the organ- 
ism, the more is it animal, the less intellectual; the 
more material, the less spiritual. 



130 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

this flows the explanation of nerve habit ; nerve 
instruction, as in the fingers of the pianist ; reflex 
action ; insistence of nerve memory, as when nerve 
life, deprived of any usual functional exercise, or 
indulgence, sets up an irritating reminder, amount- 
ing to memory. Now, nerve diffusion is so multi- 
form and minute, that no point of the exterior or 
interior of the physical body is without nervous 
ramifications, and a needle point, placed anywhere, 
will pierce them. If, then, the physical body be 
stripped of tissue, blood, and bony skeleton, we 
would have left a sort of phantom duplicate of man. 
But this is the repository of the life, or spirit force. 
It is the spirit manikin, as well as the channels of 
life force. And if we could see mind contour, it 
would necessarily take this life form and appear- 
ance. 

The last summary of our proposition is, that the 
life, or spirit quality of the inbeing force of matter, 
is a diffusion of the universal spirit, which like the 
light of the sun is thrown everywhere. Matter is 
guided in its tendencies by this spirit tendency, to 
organic structure, and to the manifestation of life, 
sensation, self-consciousness, and intelligence. Spirit 
is everywhere, and the material atom must forever 
move in a spiritual atmosphere ; like particles of iron 
in a magnetic field, it is perpetually bathed in a dif- 
fusion of force of a particular kind. As matter as- 
sumes higher and higher organic life forms, spirit force 
is more manifest. Spirit tendencies and powers ac- 
quire more strength, and propensities and passion, 
not only in orders of life, but in individuals of any 



EVIDENCE OF SPIRIT. 131 

order, are more subordinated to that spirit strength. 
Spirit force enters into, and is a quality of life force, 
of all organic forms. Spirit of a low organism is less 
than that of a higher; and in the ascending scale to 
man, spirit ascends. It is more and more developed 
and dominant, and has more independent power. 
Further : The grosser and more sensual the organ- 
ism, the more is it animal, the less intellectual ; the 
more material, the less spiritual. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

RELIGION OF SCIENCE A RELIGION OF GOD. 

Idea of Supreme Spirit a Duplex Conception — Religious Thought 
and its Evolution — True Religion and True Science — Results 
Unite instead of Diverging — Religion Common to all Men — Of 
the Great Religions of Earth — Evolution of Great Religious 
Leaders — Spiritual Phenomena Psychic — Duty of Science to 
Investigate and Develop Truth. 

WHAT idea of the Supreme Spirit do we ac- 
quire from the standpoint of force and 
matter — unbiased by previous education, 
and by the suggestions of the religions of the day ? 
From the laws of its grand aggregations ; from the 
division of matter into elements ; from the great 
cycles of change through which it passes ; we have, 
as has been seen, evidence of a Supreme controlling 
Spirit. 

From the phenomena of organic life, sensibility, 
consciousness, and intelligence, we pass to the idea 
that our own being has to some degree the spiritual 
essence of the Divine nature, imparted through the 
processes of organic life. This is the whole logic of 
natural religion. 

There are here involved two conceptions of a Su- 
preme Being. The first is of absoluteness and im- 

132 



RELIGION OF SCIENCE A RELIGION OF GOD. 1 33 

personality. The second of a sympathetic, near, and 
loving spirit. These are the conceptions that every 
thoughtful man and woman, whether conscious of it 
or not, has of the Divine existence, whether they 
have sat under the religious instruction of the day, 
or have climbed up by the steep and rugged heights 
of science to a knowledge of God. The one is of a 
Being Absolute in power and qualities, All Supreme, 
pervading all space and existing from all time to all 
time. 

So far as this utter absence of relativity of ideas 
can be called a conception, it is an association in the 
mind, of a supreme omnipresent spirit of Intelli- 
gence, with limitless time, space, matter, force, and 
their undeviating law of action. We apprehend 
an unknowable extent of Spirit Being, so vastly 
beyond and above us, that nothing which we can 
comprehend of Him is much more than unsympa- 
thetic mystery and awe. 

The second conception is more real, because more 
comprehensible ; it is concrete in nature, an under- 
standing of qualities applied to subject. We un- 
derstand by it, Divine nearness to even Fatherly 
sympathetic spirit, and this is not absorbed in the 
first pantheistic conception. We understand God 
to be the director and supporter of all things in 
nature and in the visible universe ; the origin of 
order, regularity, and beauty, and at the same time 
the Being who has given us vitality and intelligence. 
In this view the Supreme Spirit is associated with 
the humblest form of life. The tiny struggling flower 
of the desert, lifting up its pure, sweet face from the 



134 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

arid waste, in thankfulness, is as much remembered ' 
as the loftiest human personality. We remember 
that the life and spirit power of each had the same 
origin ; and that He has directed, and must share in 
all the minute as well as the great operations of na- 
ture. We feel that He is in close sympathy with all 
things, and that the wise and the weak, the lofty and 
the degraded, are alike considered in His plans. And 
though we recognize everywhere, law, both of thought 
and action, we are impressed by a conscious sense of 
the nearness of His spirit, and we know that our 
purest and best ideas have a response in His spiritu- 
ality. 

In our relations to our fellow-man, we have the 
sense of justice, of consideration, of sympathy, of 
•affection, of pity, and of love, and as we remember 
that our life and spirit are derived from the shadow 
of His being, we attribute to Him similar, but more 
perfect attributes. We are convinced that He has 
impressed some of the qualities of his own spirit 
upon the life He has given to the inbeing force of 
matter, for a purpose ; and that we are one of the 
processes of that purpose. 

It is this second conception of God that brings 
about our idea of His nearness, and of our direct 
relations to Him, and it does not at all involve the 
idea of Divine interposition or of special agency. But 
the best spirit of modern science does involve, and 
as certainly necessitates and teaches, the obligation 
to purity of life ; upright conduct ; obedience to the 
highest demands of Divine law ; love of man and of 
God ; and the closest sympathy with His spirit, as 



RELIGION OF SCIENCE A RELIGION OF GOD. 1 35 

seen through those wonderful phenomena whose as- 
sembly we call nature ; — as does what is understood 
as revealed religion. The two point to the same end 
and purpose, as well as to identity of effort : — that 
is, elevation of man and love of God. Hence the re- 
ligion of science is a religion of God. 

Setting aside, for the present, considerations of re- 
vealed religion, we find that estimates of a Divine 
nature, at any time, and among any people, have 
been to a considerable extent reflections of contem- 
poraneous enlightenment, or ignorance, and that 
these estimates have been accordingly exalted or 
degraded. We find religious thought and literature 
to have been a development, not always progressive, 
sometimes advancing, sometimes retrograding, but 
a thought always modified by local influence of cli- 
mate, not unfrequently with its songs of praise, and 
basic ceremonies, influenced largely by the natural 
resources of the country and of the soil, either spon- 
taneous or developed. Nor can it, by any means, be 
said that the religion of a people at any time was the 
product of the best thought of which they were capa- 
ble, or even that it was best adapted to their condi- 
tion, but that it has always advanced, or failed to 
advance, as a factor dependent upon the general 
condition of the people. 

Yet notwithstanding this, by the light of scientific 
and material truths ; of general contemporaneous 
knowledge, and by the aid of a gifted spirituality of 
being, men have arrived, at different periods of earth 
history, not only at lofty conceptions of a Supreme 
Spiritual Being, but of the purest morality ; and 



136 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

have attained great personal elevation of character, 
and the strictest practice of virtue. The Deity has, 
by them, been conceived to embody, in a perfect 
form, all those qualities with which we now invest 
His character, as goodness, power, wisdom, grace, 
justice, beauty, sovereignty, and love. The phi- 
losophy of their times has been pure and elevated, 
and their teachings closely approach to those of 
modern Christianity. 

We repeat that true religion and true science have 
a common thought and a common purpose, and that 
is, the highest good of humanity. They should 
labor harmoniously and in concert, — for true science 
leads to a broad understanding of God, and brings 
man into closer relations with His Spirit through 
nature. Science arrived at the idea and conviction of 
a Supreme Spirit. The religion of science is a religion 
of God, and differs not from that of revelation in 
its purity or practice. The aspiration of all good 
thought is mutual progress and advancement toward 
higher and better life conditions. As the elevation 
of man is the avowed purpose of religious instruc- 
tion and of all religions, so the avowed object of all 
science and of all systems of philosophy, is greater 
happiness in this life, joined not unfrequently to the 
hope of a higher ultimate life. 

All are aids in one work, and as such, are exalted 
expressions of man's conceptions and trust. The 
only absolute facts that science can present, are 
facts and laws of phenomena. When it draws infer- 
ences as to first or final causes, its status is pre- 
cisely the same as that of any form of religion when 



RELIGION OF SCIENCE A RELIGION OF GOD. 1 37 

doing the same thing. There are in both cases the 
same possibilities and probabilities. Drummond, the 
author of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, says : 
" All religious truths are doubtable. There is no 
absolute proof for any one of them. Even the fun- 
damental truth, the existence of God, no man can 
prove by reason. The ordinary religious proof of 
the existence of God involves either an assumption ; 
argument in a circle ; or a contradiction. Entire 
satisfaction to the intellect about any of the great 
problems is simply unattainable ; and if you try to 
get at the bottom of argument, there is simply no 
bottom there. All religion comes out of the litera- 
ture and the thought of the time— progress. In the 
distant past there flowed among the nations of hea- 
thendom a small stream of religion, and now and then 
at intervals, men carried along by the stream uttered 
themselves in words. The historical books come 
from facts, the devotional books from experiences ; 
the letters came out of circumstances ; and the gos- 
pels came out of all three. That is where the Bible 
came from. It came out of religion, and not re- 
ligion from the Bible." 

It is idle to prattle of a conflict between religion 
and science. If science has borrowed its moral su- 
premacy from great universal truths, from ages of 
growth in ideas of utility and benevolence in the 
struggles of man, so religion has borrowed much and 
changed much, and acquired much from the truths 
of science. " Religion is not the acceptance or re- 
jection of dogma ; it is a temper, a behavior." If 
science has in its discovery of truth, pointed to One 



138 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

Supreme Spirit, no religion can do more. Churches 
and creeds, and religion, are not the same thing. 
The elemental idea of all religion is best expressed 
in the language of that lofty and lovely spirit, who 
spoke as never man spoke: " Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself." 

Creeds and dogmas are built up. . They are the 
work of man, pure and simple. They come from 
organization, and the desire for strength, power, and 
importance. All the great religions, doubtless, have 
the same intention, love of man and of God, and His 
adoration and worship. But they prescribe many 
things more. Each form of belief, according to men, 
'must have compactness, unity, and concert of action. 
From this idea have followed given forms, tenets, 
ceremonies, fast and feast days, all more or less pre- 
tentious and exacting. These are the built-up ad- 
ditions to the great fundamental principle above 
enunciated, alike the aim of science, and of all forms 
of religion. The heart and the thoughts of man ; 
purity, love, unselfishness ; the simple teachings of 
the loving Sermon on the Mount by the gentle 
Christ ; and man bowing in the silence of his cham- 
ber to the supremacy of God ; these are all in all. 

All intelligent men, at all periods of time, have 
had a religion, and all religions conforming to the 
degree of advancement of the time have been use- 
ful. Each individual, whether professed materialist 
or atheist, or not, has a religion ; — that is, a gov- 
erning order of thought, or of principles, — rules of 



RELIGION OF SCIENCE A RELIGION OF GOD. 1 39 

conduct, that are to him more controlling, more in- 
timate, closer to his personality, than any other 
order of thought. Does not this universal groping 
of mankind, this unconscious reaching out of aspira- 
tion toward the Supreme controller of things, indi- 
cate that deep within the nature of all, unknown 
and otherwise unfelt by us, there is an unfathomable 
yet profound natural sympathy with that Universal 
Life and Spirit which we call God ? " Through our 
finite and fallible faculties we may not hope to com- 
prehend God ; yet science may lead us to even higher 
and more rational conceptions of His possible nature. 
It may help us to find truth both in the theistic and 
pantheistic idea, and thus to reconcile what may 
at first seem too antagonistic to be entertained 
together." 

The great religions of the earth, through a steadily 
advancing enlightenment, have been constantly draw- 
ing nearer to each other and nearer to scientific fact 
and discovery. The whole tendency of the move- 
ment is toward broader views of humanity and of a 
Supreme Being. More charitable, more gentle, more 
liberal to man ; more fundamental, more universal, 
more rational toward the great Fatherhood of God. 
Still nearer they must approach, until all unite not 
only in a common belief of a Father of love, but in 
that of the brotherhood and kinship of man as de- 
rived in common from Universal Spirit ; in one hope 
of universal advancement, one belief in a spiritual 
life hereafter and in one acceptance of law as applied 
to our material world and life, as well as to the hope 
of continued existence. 



140 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT, 

Science has neared the limit of its research as to 
origin and evolution of life. There is a limit in min- 
uteness which it cannot pass ; and there is a limit in 
the beyond, which it cannot pass. Before and be- 
hind, inclosing all discovery and knowledge, are the 
unknowable and the unfathomable. 

From time to time there have been born into the 
ages, though not of them, great personalities, whose 
teachings or works embrace not only all that has 
been evolved up to their time, but whose ideas and 
projects lead on to periods beyond them, spanning a 
far distant future ; ever seeming to connect with a 
period, when another incarnation of greatness ap- 
pears, to take up the thought and work of the first, 
and to carry it on and on to ages beyond. Such men 
and women are rare, but of great powers, which 
we call genius. They have represented every path 
of progress : Religion, war, mechanics, music, sculp- 
ture, science, painting, invention, and architecture. 
They are the product of the spiritual and organic 
influences of the time. That such prodigies of hu- 
manity may appear, two influences must harmoni- 
ously conspire, viz. ; spiritual sympathy of the age, 
and correspondent life harmony of the organism, 
with its environment. The spirit sympathy is from 
the united thought of the age, its wants, desires, 
hopes, aspirations. The life harmony is in unison 
with this, and they conspire to produce grand births. 
Great waves of religious influence and thought, 
dominating vast areas of the public mind, have pro- 
duced marvels of mental and spiritual life ; — of men 
and women whose spiritual emotions ascended to 



RELIGION OF SCIENCE A RELIGION OF GOD. 141 

close sympathy with the Universal Spirit. " Per- 
sonalties so far in advance of the great majority, 
that their grandest mental conceptions are unex- 
pressed, because thought symbols of language can- 
not convey the spiritual conditions of these few, 
elected to walk as an advanced guard to generations. 
They bear the outward semblance of the human 
type, but until the last scar of mental and physical 
disease, transmitted through the law of heredity, is 
obliterated from man, must they walk in our midst, 
— many times in obscurity, because born (spiritually) 
before their time." 

Such beings are in every sense inspired. Beyond 
the sources indicated, " whence their emanation and 
how they got their power we cannot see. There is 
no explication of their lives. They rise from shadow 
and go in mist. We see them, feel them, but we 
know them not. They arrived, they did their of- 
fice, with God's holy mantle about them and passed 
away, leaving behind them a memory half mortal, 
half myth. From first to last they are creations 
baffling the wit of man to fathom." Mozoomdar, 
the great leader of the Brahmo-Somaj in India, says: 
" All the impulses and strong wishes for moral or 
spiritual life become proved realities in these supe- 
rior beings. The mind of God, faintly shadowed in 
our hearts, kindles into a sort of supernatural light 
in them. It illumines our path far before and be- 
hind. They become divine men. Not a few fall 
down and worship them as Gods. The wisdom of 
Greece took shape in a Socrates ; the stoicism of 
Rome, in a Seneca ; the asceticism and self-conquest 



• 142 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

of India in a Sakya-Muni ; its insight in a Krishna : 
the Chinese sense of <luty, in a Confucius ; the Arab 
energy of faith in a Mohammed. Each is a principle 
of humanity, each a phase of the Divine reason, each 
is a spiritual principle personified. " God has not 
left Himself without witnesses," without representa- 
tives. Such are the very best of earth, — men who 
are sent in the double capacity of representing both 
God and man, — they being human in the highest 
and divinest sense, and divine in the most intelligible 
sense." 

Each of these lofty personalities belongs to his 
own time. Each represents its best thought, its 
utmost aspiration, its necessity for change, and each 
is the embodiment of its virtue. The greatest of 
"all was Jesus Christ, above criticism, above imagi- 
nation. Pre-eminent love for man and God, utter 
unselfishness, perfection in thought and deed, dur- 
ing a whole life, were all His. He was fearless, just, 
and patient, and with a gentleness of spirit that 
belongs to God. His was the living illustration of 
Divine attributes, so far as they can be personified 
in man's nature, and but for Christ they would have 
remained abstract idealities. The reflection of His 
whole being is the exalted and pure Sermon on the 
Mount, embracing all there is of morality, and all 
there is in religion. More beautiful words were 
never spoken, higher, purer thoughts were never 
expressed. For the first time in the history of the 
world, He taught that the religion of God is a re- 
ligion of love. 

There remains one other kindred subject which 



RELIGION OF SCIENCE A RELIGION OF GOD. 1 43 

has manifested itself as a religion of phenomena. 
It has attracted world-wide attention, and within 
the last forty years has attained proportions of 
thought in ail civilized countries, which cannot 
be ignored. Comprehended under the general 
term of Spiritualism, it has aroused a degree of en- 
thusiasm and intensity of interest among its advo- 
cates, equalled only by the ardent hostility and 
bitterness of feeling arrayed against it. On one 
side are millions of men and women earnestly con- 
tending for the purity of its doctrines, and the 
genuineness of its marvels. On the other, opposing 
such sentiments, are the learned ; the world of fash- 
ion and pleasure ; the intolerance of established 
forms of religion, and the men of science. Its be- 
lievers are without organization, without leaders, 
and without concert of action ; the phenomena wit- 
nessed are not classified, and honesty is not always 
insured. Victimized on every side by charlatans ; 
imposed upon by the lies and fraud of pretenders ; 
fed upon by parasites, whose sole purpose is gain, 
it has been unjustly and unfortunately exposed to 
ridicule and contempt. Those who have the most 
readily accepted this form of faith are the humblest 
and uninformed, without the advantages of learning 
to enable them to judge wisely, and who yield to 
their great desire to witness phenomena, either to 
fortify a waning faith, or to gratify intense curi- 
osity. Examined by the cold light of reason, we 
find that its phenomena point to psychic force, ac- 
companied or directed by uncommon and surpris- 
ing thought manifestations. And its philosophy we 



144 MATTER, FORCE, AND SPIRIT. 

find to be what the broadest religion teaches, love 
of God and of humanity ; that there is no royal 
road to heaven ; that unselfishness, purity of con- 
duct and thought are the standards for all, and by 
which all advance, here and hereafter. In many 
ways spiritualism has accomplished vast good. The 
investigation of all the phenomena of this subject, 
science owes to itself and to mankind. If science 
be a leader of physical thought, it should be a leader 
in all forms of physical and psychical questions. 

Here are phenomena far out of the ordinary char- 
acter, and vouched for by unimpeachable testimony. 
Surely if nothing be too lofty for scientific investi- 
gation, nothing should be too humble. 

To assist those who are unable to inquire for 
themselves should be the purpose. If there be 
truths, let them be classified and added to the cabi- 
net of scientific knowledge. If there be illusions, 
or baseless trumpery, or phenomena connected with 
laws already known, let their character be estab- 
lished. Truth alone can make man free. Perchance 
higher spiritual truths stand without, waiting to be 
recognized. All additions to psychic facts are links^ 
binding together organic life and spirituality, and 
binding all individual spirituality to the Infinite and 
Universal Spirit, 

" That God, who ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves." 

THE END. 



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